


Imperfect Tense

by jukeboxhound



Category: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII
Genre: Crossover, Drama, Humor, M/M, Past Underage, Revised Version, Time Travel, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-22
Updated: 2016-07-16
Packaged: 2017-11-22 00:04:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 25
Words: 67,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/603553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jukeboxhound/pseuds/jukeboxhound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jenova's legacy, living on through the Sorceresses, means that Squall has an unstable Seifer on his hands as well as another impending apocalypse.  He doesn't know what to do with these awkward people claiming to be ancient warriors brought back to fight an alien menace, and really, maybe paperwork hadn't been so bad after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Which Shit Starts Getting Stirred Up

**Author's Note:**

  * For [arinrowan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/arinrowan/gifts), [fateofshadow](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=fateofshadow).



> I would've let this story die years ago if arin-rowan hadn't started bribing me with [her beautiful things](http://www.etsy.com/shop/arinsdesigns) and fateofshadow given me the puppy eyes. It was originally published in 2006, inspired by Konitsu's _Bandages_ , but going back to reread it was a painful experience that begged a rewrite. So.
> 
> **Canon** : FFVIII and FFVII. This fic was started before the first _Advent Children_ and the rest of FF7's compilation came out, so it conflicts at times with later canon. The 'time travel' tag might be a little misleading given how the trope usually goes in FF7 fic, but yeah.

_Squall dreamed._  
  
_He stood in a field of pale flowers underneath a white sky. There were no aches in his body, none of the exhaustion that had slowly been wearing him down, just a quiet kind of relaxation that made his limbs feel heavy and dreamlike. Squall walked until he realized he could walk forever and never reach the horizon._  
  
_The hairs on the back of his neck suddenly prickled and Squall whirled around sharply, hand moving for Lion Heart at his hip. A grey wolf watched him with eyes that were intelligent, glowing faintly blue. They stared at one another, waiting for the other to make the first move, and then he blinked –_  
  
_And there was no longer a wolf but a man with the same glowing eyes, a little shorter than Squall with a riot of yellow hair. The stark black of his clothing made him look sickly pale and exhausted, but he managed to carry the weight of an enormous sword over his back easily enough._   " _Who are you?" seemed the most sensible question._  
  
" _Cloud," said the man after a pause. "Cloud Strife. Most of the time."_  
  
_The name wasn't familiar, and for a moment Squall wondered if all of this, this odd dream, was Shiva's doing, some metaphorical theater meant to inspire self-revelation and inner peace._   " _I was asleep," was a safe, neutral statement, and though he watched Strife carefully, there was no sign of aggression or disbelief._  
  
_Strife frowned slightly. "Only the dead or the Cetra can use the Lifestream like this, Leonhart."_  
  
" _How do you know me?"_  
  
" _I_ _don't. The Cetra do."_  
  
_It was Squall who frowned this time, and he opened his mouth to ask who the Cetra were and what kind of dream this was, exactly, but then Shiva's voice was_

calling him awake.  Squall lay in bed for a moment and stared up at the ceiling. Predawn light came in through the slatted blinds of the commander's quarters, washing the plain white walls with a faintly blue light. Griever's cross was warm on his bare chest as Shiva, now that he was awake, withdrew silently into his subconscious.  
__  
Cloud Strife. _Sorcerer?_ he mused, though he'd never heard of men with that kind of power. There was something about Strife's presence that had tainted the serenity of the field of flowers, the same kind of energy that had left a muted hum in the center of his chest when Rinoa had been around. Not as strong as when he was in the presence of a Sorceress, but _there_ nevertheless.  A new Guardian Force? Yes, because Guardian Forces were known for being so much like a human. _It was just a dream. Don't be stupid._  
  
The weariness had seeped back into his body and he lay on his back for a while, thinking about nothing in particular except that Quistis would likely be irritated if he showed up to his office so early. The only sound in his quarters was the quiet hum of Garden's utilities. He wondered if he needed to restock some of the supplies in the armory; he should get Irvine or Selphie to check on that.

The light had shifted a few degrees by the time Squall roused himself and went to shower. The water was warm and had the faintly metallic taste that Timber was never quite able to strip out. His clothes were freshly laundered, courtesy of Quistis' badgering of the cleaning staff, no doubt, without whom he probably would've worn the same clothes for days at a time and violated every one of Quistis' professional sensibilities in the process.  He ran a hand through damp hair as he stepped out of his quarters with the mechanical hush of an electronic door.  
  
It was early enough that he didn't come across anyone on his way to his office, a large box with light grey walls and nondescript carpet, even with the strengthening light crawling through the window. There was, as usual, paperwork that had somehow found its way to his desk overnight like a persistent vermin infestation: military requests, political entreaties, and student applications, and Squall wondered why people seemed incapable of helping themselves without his signature on the bottom line, why they thought killing a Sorceress would make him qualified for this position.  He hadn't even been driven by any sort of ideal -- just his own selfish reasons.  
  
Leaning Lion Heart against the wall within reach, he worked through the papers as the rising sun shortened the shadows in his office.  
  
"Squall?"  
  
Quistis was leaning in through the door, eyes stern behind her glasses. When Squall just blinked at her, she entered, the whip coiled at her waist bouncing gently against her thigh.  "Did you sleep at all?"  
  
"Yes," he said shortly, turning back to the mission report he held. _Casualties from monster attack…_  
  
"You're here awfully early."  Obviously.  "Have you eaten?"  
  
"No." _Scans showed monster stats were unusually high…_  
  
Quistis bit her lip briefly. "Squall."  
  
"I'll have the secretary call for something from the cafeteria." This _was_ about the time she started her shift, wasn't it? Squall couldn't remember.  
  
Thankfully she let the matter drop with a frustrated sigh. "There's been another request from Galbadia for financial restitution."  
  
Squall's eyes narrowed. "Garden isn't a charity."  
  
"Nevertheless, they feel that SeeD was responsible for much of the damage and that SeeDs should be out there rebuilding, or at least paying for it," she said dryly. When Squall snorted, she continued, "They probably came to me about the issue because I'm a woman and thus a bleeding heart, and so they wouldn't have to deal with you."  
  
Hilarious.  
  
"Oh, and Laguna's been trying to get a hold of you."  
  
Fuck. "If this is about the treaty, tell him I haven't changed my mind."  
  
"I have been. I can see where you get your stubbornness."

His glare, quite literally, caused the temperature to drop a few degrees. She crossed her arms and shifted her weight, looking at him more keenly than Squall was comfortable with, but before she could press him on this other issue (and it _was_ an issue, wasn't it, when a person's coldness was no longer quite so metaphorical and one was reminded that the side-effects of using Guardian Forces weren't fully known), he asked, "Have you ever heard of something called the Lifestream?"  
  
She frowned thoughtfully. "It sounds familiar. Maybe it was mentioned in one of the magic courses? I'm sorry, I don't know anything about it. Why?"  
  
But Squall had already turned back to the report, and after a moment he heard the clicking of her heels disappear outside and down the hallway. He was irritated with himself for having indulged a moment of whimsy.  
  
_The monsters also appeared to display a basic understanding of attack strategy…_  
  
It was a dream. It didn't mean anything.

…

_Squall dreamed._  
  
_The flowers were still butter-yellow and lace-white, the sky still empty and unchanging. He could smell a storm looming on the horizon._  
  
_The man was there again, sitting in the flowers with his elbows on his knees and the huge sword resting against his back, the tip pressing heavily into the ground.  Squall stood beside him and wondered if humans could naturally have those eyes.  Time was impossible to measure in this place, so it could've been minutes or hours before Squall finally seated himself beside the other man, laying Lion Heart across his lap so its handle wouldn't dig into his hip. Neither spoke at first, but t_ _hen Strife said, "People think war and death are the two worst things we can experience."_  
  
_Squall said nothing._  
  
_"They're wrong. The worst thing is the silence that comes after."_

…

"Squall! I'm so glad I finally managed to catch you. You're an incredibly difficult person to get a hold of."  
  
Squall stared back at his father, already vaguely regretting accepting the call. Laguna's voice was cheerful, despite the tinny quality of the vid-phone, but there were lines of worry around his eyes.  "What did you want?"  
  
Laguna was momentarily taken aback, but he recovered with an exhausted smile. "Well, something's…happened. Sort of. I mean, I'm not really sure _what_ happened, but it can't be good."  
  
If people were given a finite number of words they could use per lifetime, business would be so much more efficient. "If you don't know, then find me someone who does."  
  
Laguna was gently pushed aside and Kiros took his place, looking even more exhausted. "Some of our weather stations have detected an anomaly on the northern continent. Unusual weather patterns, mostly, and tremors. One of these stations near Dollet has been reporting sightings of monsters that no one has seen before."  
  
"Why haven't I heard this?"  Squall made a mental note to speak with Quistis about getting their own reports on these monsters.  
  
"Our scientists don't think there's anything to be concerned about yet. There hasn't been any increase in monster-related deaths or anything, but they're keeping a sharp eye on the situation."  
  
Laguna took back the vid-phone and said, "You remember what we spoke about last time, Squall?" His voice was still lighthearted, but there was an unmistakable spark of shrewdness in his eyes. "If there _is_ a potential threat – "  
  
" _No._ "  
  
"Surely you see – "  
  
"Balamb Garden is an independent institution," Squall said flatly. "An alliance made with any nation not only calls into question our professionalism but also usurps the entire purpose of SeeD."  
  
Laguna's bid to tie Balamb Garden to Esthar, wherein the nation would provide financial aid in peacetime and the Garden in turn would aid Esthar in times in of war by default, made Squall's skin crawl.  He'd rather send his SeeDs on embarrassing missions to save cats from trees than sign away their integrity. _Garden belongs to no one_ , and he severed the connection.

_…_

_"Look at me!"_  
  
_But the other boy never turned in his direction, and he was confused and hurt because everyone else did, even if it was only because they were irritated or angered._  
  
_"Look at me!" Seifer grabbed the other boy's arm and twisted, leaving a raw rash. "Don't ignore me!"_  
  
_The other boy wrenched his arm away and swung a tiny fist, connecting painfully with Seifer's jaw, and then they were rolling around on the ground kicking and snarling like little wild animals._  
  
"SEIFER."  
  
_"Don't ignore me!"_  
  
"SEIFER."  
  
_Seifer wrestled his way free and_ looked up at Fujin, her one eye narrowed with worry. She carried a small tray in her callused hands.  "Fu?" Seifer rasped, blinking away his _dream? Memory? Ow, my goddamn head._  
  
"EAT."  
  
His bed felt cold though he'd been lying there for several hours, and he shivered as he pulled himself up to sit. He was _so weak, you insignificant little worm –_  
  
There was a bowl of broth that warmed his hands when he cradled it, and he let his lips rest against the edge for a moment, imagining that the heat from the broth passed through the bowl and his cold lips to soothe the pounding in his temples. Had Fujin always had one eye? He couldn't remember. Must've been a violent fight to lose her eye, but the other guy probably lost his life. Pride, that his friend was so strong; guilt, that she was wasting her time on a broken man.  
  
"OKAY?"  
  
"I feel like shit and this tastes even worse," he sniped, but there was no heat behind his words. If he tilted the bowl slightly the dim overhead light would refract off the broth and bits of vegetable inside, and he didn't have to look up to see the sadness in Fujin's expression. _Weak_ , said the voices inside of him. _Pathetic. Sob stories only get you so far until the audience loses interest, and it looks like you lost that a long time ago._  
  
Fujin's hands were cool against the feverish warmth of his skin as she gently but firmly pushed the bowl against his lips again. "DRINK," she commanded, and through all the timelines in his head Seifer felt a rush of anger ( _how dare she patronize me_ ) and guilt ( _fuck I'm such an immature shit_ ). But eventually he managed to finish the broth, as much as his nausea could handle, and then Fujin pressed him back down to the bed.  
  
"SLEEP."  
  
How the mighty have fallen.

…

Vincent had been dreaming for a very long time. His breathing had evened out until his heart beat once every ten years and the flow of his blood mimicked the natural tides of the Planet.  
  
He dreamed mostly of the past in vague blurs, like watching a room full of people through a rain-drenched window. The people were indistinct, soundless shapes playing out familiar scenes.  Sometimes he dreamed of darkness and blood and agony, and during those times he could hear CHAOS laughing.  But most often he lay quiet, cradled in the warmth of the Planet in a sleep that was as close to death as he could come. He could see the Lifestream, touch it, but he couldn't join the cycle of birth-death-rebirth that was the right of all mortals.  
  
Vincent recalled once dreaming of himself on a cliff overlooking Midgar, the sun low in the sky and the ground as dry as a desert. He stood at the very edge and when he looked to his side, Cloud was sitting by his feet, staring off into space towards the city. Vincent glanced behind them and wasn't surprised to see a large patch of dirt stained dark with old blood, not far from where the old Buster sword was slowly rusting away. Nothing was said, and after a while the dream dissipated.  
  
But now his dreams were changing. The pulse of the Planet was shifting, growing faster, and Vincent could feel awareness returning to him.


	2. In Which Vampires Rise and Cloud Is Still a Little Traumatized

Mako felt like the burn of ice. To a boy that had grown up in the Nibel mountains, the cold was a fact of life, something to be endured, but mako seared the flesh with an iciness that made skin bubble and muscles spasm uncontrollably. The Lifestream itself didn't burn, didn't freeze; instead it left an ache deep in Cloud's body that was almost worse for being intangible.  Time had no meaning here and so Cloud didn't know how long he'd been under this endlessly white sky. It felt like yesterday when he'd allowed the Cetra to take his living body, but it could've been centuries. Ages.  Eons of alternating angst and numbness.

_Aeris? Is this the Promised Land?_

_No, Cloud, I'm sorry. It won't be until you can forgive yourself and let go._

But that would mean letting go of his mother, of Zack, of _Sephiroth_ , letting them die all over again. So he remained in a world of whiteness and flowers, untouched and undisturbed.

Then, for the first time, there was someone else.  It wasn't Aeris, or anyone else he'd ever known. This man was a fighter in his own right, carrying a battle-scarred gunblade like it was an extension of his body. His eyes were cold but in the way that the natural ice of Nibelheim was cold, like Sephiroth's when he'd still been human.

After the second, then the third time Leonhart appeared, Cloud didn't bother being surprised. At first he'd been on the defensive, but when Leonhart didn't even seem to recognize him as the world's hero, or even care, Cloud ignored him like one ignores a particularly ugly piece of furniture. Some part of him was faintly amused to realize that he'd finally found another person as loquacious as himself, and so he was startled when Leonhart suddenly spoke.

"There aren't any records of this 'Lifestream.'"

What the hell had happened that people had completely forgotten the Lifestream?  "It's the life force of the Planet." Cloud stared up into the empty sky. "It's where our souls go after we die."

There was a pause. "And the Cetra?"

"Cetra…they're Ancients. They were here before us. Before humans." Felt so strange to be speaking aloud. How long had it been? He'd been here a long time. Felt like yesterday.

Leonhart fell silent. Cloud leaned back on his hands and closed his eyes, listening to the creak of leather as Leonhart shifted his weight and the Lifestream's whispers _(Leonhart's rather young to be a commander, but Sephiroth wasn't even legal to drink when he burned Wutai to the ground)_ that hovered around. _It's always the quiet ones you've gotta watch out for, right, kiddo?_

"I shouldn't be here."  Cloud glanced over without turning his head, but Leonhart was staring off into the distance. "I'm not dead or a Cetra."

Cloud wasn't very interested. Souls passed through the Lifestream endlessly, through birth and death, and had done so since the Planet first bore life. Cloud had never come across any of these others _(Vincent wasn't really there, it must've been a dream, just a dream)_ , but they were still there, living and moving on. "The Cetra must've had a reason to bring you here, then."

"Is this to do with Ultimecia?" Leonhart asked, his hand tightened around the hilt of his gunblade. "Or some other Sorceress?"

So, the guy _was_ capable of emotions stronger than mild irritation.  Cloud casually he lifted his hand over his shoulder and let it curl loosely around Ultima's hilt. Not threatening. Merely waiting.  _Avoid a fight when you can_ , Zack had said. _When you can't, make damn sure you're the one finishing it._ When the silence stretched on, Leonhart finally relaxed.  He couldn't have been more than seventeen, eighteen at most, but the scar across the bridge of his nose was old and he carried himself like a blooded soldier.  Zack looked like that whenever someone talked about the Wutai War.

Long after Leonhart disappeared and Cloud was left alone, he sat with his arms wrapped around his knees and the broadsword heavy against his shoulders.

_If I'm seeing Leonhart, why not –_

He didn't finish the thought.

…

Light burned Vincent's eyes. The cavern's walls were coated in a thick layer of ice that shone faintly blue, refracting the weak sunlight that came in through the small entrance into millions of tiny rainbows. Vincent knew he'd been sleeping for years and years, but little had changed in this cave, creating the surreal feeling that the world outside would be just as he'd left it.

A thick layer of ice had formed over him that took a few mako-enhanced struggles to crack. He rose slowly, his body stiff, eyes nearly blinded by the unaccustomed light. There was a distinct lack of the Lifestream's sharp ozone scent.  _How long have you slept, Valentine?_

Vincent flexed his hands to loosen up his fingers. One was still human, still callused and scarred, the other brassy and spotless. He waited patiently for his heart to regain its normal rhythm, and his thoughts were just as slow, having grown used to the unhurried cycles of the Planet.  It took a little longer to remember how to stand: the first few steps were painful until his muscles loosened a bit more, wobbly until his body found its balance. He had to brace himself against the icy walls, but eventually he was able to drag himself through the short tunnel and out of the cave mouth.

The Northern Crater yawned before him as though a giant had scooped out an enormous handful of earth and then covered it with a blanket of snow under a bruised, desolate sky. It smelled like there was a storm coming, and Vincent felt like the only living thing for miles around.  Maybe there was a particularly determined polar bear or two.

Vincent looked down at himself, at long hair tangling itself around his knees like grasping tendrils, the clothes nearly rotted into a few thin threads.  Sorrow pressed down on his heart at the signs of aging, all evidence that the others he fought alongside were likely long dead and gone. Expecting such consequences was different from actually _experiencing_ them.

_I hope for their sake that they were all able to move on._

…

There was nothing like killing things to develop a sense of inner peace.  The training room was hardly a battlefield, but it was better than nothing, and when it came to thinking about his conversation with Laguna yesterday it was far more effective a therapy than the counselors that Kadowaki was always talking about.  Zell had shown up just as a tentacle parted ways with a grat, neatly sidestepping it before it hit him in the face.  Squall completely ignored him until the grat lay as a dead, steaming pile of flesh.

"Damn," Zell whistled, shoving his hands in his pockets and strolling forward now that Lion Heart wasn't swinging everywhere. "If I didn't know any better I'd say you had a grudge against anything big, fat, and green."

"What do you want?"

"Your daddy sent over some reports that Quistis wants you to see. None of the cadets were brave enough to interrupt their big scary commander on a slaughter spree, so they sent the head of security instead."

Squall grunted and pulled out a cloth that had been tucked into one of his belts to wipe the gore from his gunblade.  Zell rocked restlessly on his heels.  "Stressed?" When Squall glanced sideways at him, he explained, "You only come out to the training room nowadays when something's pissed you off. Otherwise the rest of us never see you outside your office."

To be honest, Squall didn't really _regret_ getting gently shoved into the position of commander.  It was a job, and he did it well, and in return he saw his cadets grow from bewildered kids into competent, confident SeeDs.  But now he slept with paperwork under his head instead of a gunblade, went to meetings in which he rarely actually needed to give his input, and while he knew he should he should glad that the world wasn't teetering on the brink of oblivion, it wouldn't hurt to have more than bottom lines and staff complaints every day.

Zell had to call his name several times.  "Oi, Squall, you all right?"

"I'm fine." He sheathed Lion Heart and headed towards the room's entrance. Zell jogged lightly to catch up, taking two steps for each of Squall's longer strides.

"We're all worried about you, y'know."  Squall keyed the door closed and continued walking.  "I mean, you were never exactly a social butterfly, but ever since we defeated Ultimecia you've been more of a bastard than usual. And I mean that in the most loving way possible."  Technically, now that Laguna had shown his face after all these years, Squall was less of a bastard than Zell.  "And I know you're not one to talk about things – "

Squall snorted.

" – but what exactly happened during the Time Compression? It's like you left part of yourself behind."

Squall's breath caught briefly.  Rinoa had said the same thing before she left.

But now he had to wonder what kinds of conversations were going on behind his back.  An uncharacteristic burst of temper had him whirling around and fisting his hands in the front of Zell's shirt to drag him closer, nose to nose and the leather of his gloves creaking as Squall said softly, "A lot happened, Zell, but that isn't nearly as important as what's happening now.  Tell Quistis and the others that my personal life is not up for public scrutiny."

Zell stared back silently.  Squall released him roughly and continued towards the conference room, not bothering to see whether Zell followed him or not _._

"Y'know, you talk about moving on and all that shit, but man, you live in the past more than any of us."

Squall pretended not to hear.  He was good at that.

…

_("You haven't got what it takes to be a SOLDIER, kid. Gods, just get the fuck outta here.")_

Cloud was hunched over his knees, clutching his head and gritting his teeth so hard that they threatened to crack.

_("The SOLDIER will prove to be a valuable control subject. If we can get Specimen C to surpass those benchmarks, then we'll be that much closer to finding a more efficient method of producing SOLDIERs.")_

Zack –

_("Specimen C is a failure. Throw him out, the wolves will take care of the body.")_

No –

_("Doctor, he should be dead! All programs indicate his body shouldn't have been able to handle such a strong influx of Jenova cells!")_

Aeris, why –

_("Fascinating. Are there hidden depths in you to be cut out and exposed on my table, Specimen C?")_

Through the screaming in his head he dimly registered thin arms wrapping around his shoulders and a gentle, warm weight pressing against his back. "Oh, Cloud," Aeris murmured, and she felt _safe_ , she smelled like flowers and damp earth and rain and _safe_.

"I can't – it doesn't _stop_ ," he ground out, digging his fingers into his scalp a little harder, "it's like it happened yesterday and it gets all – all _mixed up_ – "

This incarnation of Aeris was only a small aspect of her original self; behind her, the Cetra were a vast consciousness, and through the Lifestream she could feel Cloud. There was so much wrong inside of him, some of it his own doing but a lot of it from what had been done to him.  Aeris pulled Cloud's hands away from his skull, ignoring the blood that streaked his fingertips, and coaxed him to uncurl into a more natural position. Slowly he leaned back against her, head tilted against her shoulder, and Aeris ran her fingers through his hair as though she could untangle the sickly, poisonous green of the bit of Lifestream inside him.

"Aeris, what's wrong?" he said suddenly, tensing all over again when he saw the sorrow in her face.

"Cloud," she started, then paused, and Cloud felt dread coil in his stomach because her own voice had deepened to the voice of a whole race, "not all of Jenova was destroyed in the Northern Crater."

"What?" he whispered.

Aeris' fingers continued combing through his hair, but it wasn't reassuring anymore. It was like a master stroking the head of a favored pet – not Aeris anymore, not at all. "You killed Sephiroth's body. Not his and Jenova's essence."

Oh, their _essence_.  Cloud pulled away, half-rising to one knee and facing her. Ultima was off to the side, within reach even here in the relative peace of the Lifestream. _Don't let your guard down_ , Zack told him laughingly. _Don't let your guard down even when you think you're safe_ , Sephiroth said with utmost seriousness. (Don't fail the general.  He might get tired of you and throw you away and then you really wouldn't be any better than a whore.)

Zack told him to say fuck this, bad idea to fight when you haven't gotten your head on straight yet, but Sephiroth said to just shut up and follow orders. Cloud didn't know what to say for himself.

"She's been incarnating herself into a select few people, trying to create another...another Sephiroth."

"Is that why Leonhart keeps showing up? Does he have something to do with this?

Aeris, or what looked like Aeris, smiled as leaned forward to put her hand against his forehead, but it wasn't a sympathetic expression. "This may seem sudden, Cloud, but it's been coming for a long time," she said just before every nerve in Cloud's body snapped taut with agony.

(Time had no meaning here.)


	3. In Which a Museum Relic Gets a Cup of Tea, on the House

,Hyperion left streaks of light in the sun as the blade sang through the air, twisting and striking out in strict control and precision. It moved with the grace of a living thing, a serpent, beautiful and swift and deadly.  Seifer felt most centered, most like himself, when his gunblade was in his hands and whispering through arcs and parries. Hyperion was as familiar to him as breathing, and when he went through the motions of the forms the _dreamsmemorieswishes_ no longer pulled his mind into strange directions.  It was all very deep and spiritual.

  
Fujin watched silently several meters away, leaning against a large rock with her arms crossed. This was the first time in weeks Seifer had been outside, though he'd struggled out of bed a few days ago and had been as restless as a bored kid ever since. He was nowhere near his old level of skill, drenched as he was with sweat from a warm-up exercise that a fresh recruit would've been able to do.  She could admit, if only to herself, that it was a painful thing to see. Not that Fujin blamed him, not entirely, but sometimes she wished that he would recognize that there were people who cared whether he lived or died and not act like a teenager convinced no one in the world could possibly understand his pain.

  
When his arm started shaking and his grip became white-knuckled, Fujin stepped in with a quick, light touch to his shoulder.  "ENOUGH."

  
"What?" he demanded, startled out of his concentration.

  
"STOP."

  
He shrugged her hand off and snorted irritably. "I'm fine, all right? I'm not a fucking _amateur._ "

  
Fujin stepped back and let him strike invisible opponents a few more times, counting down the seconds until he misjudged a swing and threw himself off-balance. Quickly she ducked under his larger body and caught him, managing to throw one of his arms across her shoulders so that he didn't take them both down. He grunted, gritting his teeth so hard the muscles stood out in his jaw, and Fujin silently led him slowly back to the small vacation cottage she and Raijin had rented under aliases.

  
"Where's Raijin?" Seifer asked quietly. His voice was rough.

  
"WORK." The cost of their rental and taking care of a mentally unstable man had forced Raijin to find work while Fujin, as the more observant and medically competent of the two, remained with Seifer.  Their cottage was one of many on a large plot of land set aside for tourists, not too far from Dollet's central square. It was small but comfortable enough for their purposes and, most importantly, few questions had been asked once the cash crossed the counter.

  
They were nearly at the back door when Seifer suddenly stiffened and made the small, pained noise of a wounded animal. Fujin immediately let him slump to his knees so she could grab his chin and force him to look at her, and the sight of his face...it scared her, more than anything.  He was pale despite the exhaustion, eyes glazed over, and the sweat on his brow was cold, in all honesty looking the way he did when Ultimecia was displeased and took it out on him, and she wondered what the hell she should do.

  
"No," he hissed through chapped lips, "You're dead – "

  
Fujin swiftly released her hold on his chin and backhanded him across the face. Though she was perhaps a third of Seifer's body mass, she sent him reeling back onto the grass in unconsciousness.

  
Well. Perhaps she should've pulled her punch a little.  Pulling his limp form back up across her shoulders, she staggered into the cottage with him.  Hopefully Raijin would be back soon.

…

  
Even trained and seasoned mercenaries were susceptible to hero worship. Quistis had had some time to get used to her own fanclub. Squall…hadn't.

  
The conference room was filled with fully-fledged SeeDs with the new headmistress, Xu, near the front. Quistis had taken over the meeting in respect of Squall's antisocial self, but even sitting to the side of the large oblong table with his arms crossed and grat blood spattered all over his leathers, he still managed to draw more than his share of awed looks. His response was to narrow his eyes and pretend that no one else in the room existed with all the skill of a disgruntled housecat.

  
The large white screen at the front of the room behind Quistis displayed the motion-blurred image of an unidentified monster. When she clicked to another slide, the image was just clear enough to show tentacles and not much else.

  
"Where did these come from?" asked a SeeD that she recognized as a former Trepie.

  
"The pictures were sent to us from the Estharian outposts up in Dollet and the other northern areas. A lot of them were taken by civilians, but none survived the encounters. They had to be scavenged from the bodies by the scientists there."

  
"So there's no Scan information on these things?" asked another incredulously.

  
"Unfortunately, no. All we have are the scientists' guesses."

  
"Well, shit," the SeeD muttered, and then flushed under Quistis' stern look.

  
Perhaps it was because he did it so rarely, but when Squall spoke people tended to shut up and lean in slightly to listen.  His voice was low and a little rough, pleasant enough to listen to that one could forgive him for being such an asshole sometimes.  "I'll speak with President Loire about sending SeeDs to kill or capture these monsters."

  
It was a good idea, if as many people had been killed as the reports said. Quistis agreed.

…

_  
He saw eyes that were glowing green with cat-slit pupils above lips that curled into a vicious sneer –_

_**  
my child, my son, my power** _

_  
He saw eyes that were glowing blue and couldn't seem to focus properly, as though there were too many voices talking behind them –_

_**  
mine** _

_  
He saw eyes that were stormy-grey-blue and familiar and so cold –_

_**  
i will have all my children** _

_  
And suddenly he knew what was going to happen except that the last time he tried to be a hero he ended up the villain._

  
When Seifer woke up he thought he could see a pattern of emerald-green threads woven through the air. They looked like magic but with the sickliness of a Status ailment, and some of the threads disappeared under the skin of his chest. The sight made something inside of him gibber with disgust and terror.

  
"How're you feeling, yanno?"

  
Raijin's voice was soft but still managed to startle Seifer into a sharp curse. He was losing his touch, hadn't even noticed the guy's presence. "Hyne fuck, Raijin, give a guy some warning," he muttered. "I feel like someone tried to bash my head in with a rock." His mouth was running on autopilot as he tried to remember what he'd just been thinking about. It seemed important, important enough for him to consider calling up Balamb's precious commander himself. Needed to talk to Leonhart.

  
"WHY?"

  
Had he spoken aloud? Seifer hadn't noticed. He let his head thunk back against the headboard.  Raijin put a hand behind his own dark head in confusion. "Seifer, what's up, man? You've got us seriously worried, yanno?"

  
"TRAINING. PASSED OUT."

  
Seifer looked around the room for a distraction. The bedroom was too small, spare, and white to be truly comfortable, like one of the few hotel rooms Seifer had ever used. The one other bed in the room, pushed up against the opposite wall, belonged to Fujin, her chakram leaning against the plywood nightstand.  Sudden guilt for what he was putting his friends through made his anger flounder and drown.

  
"C'mon, Seifer, we're here for you."

  
Yeah, he knew. Hyne knew _why_ , but he knew.

  
"When you've got a Sorceress in your head, it's like…knowing that you're never alone," he admitted, staring up at the ceiling so that he could pretend he wasn't saying such stupid sentimental bullshit. _No one kan hurt you_ , Ultimecia would say as she smiled out of Edea's face, _no one would dare to_. "And I could _feel_ her magic, it was like…"  He suddenly barked in laughter. "It was like a fucking high. I felt like a god and that every other poor fucker was just waiting for me to step up to the plate and show them the light."

  
He stopped talking because he knew that Fujin, at least, would be able to come to the right conclusion. Un-Junctioning a Guardian Force too quickly could do permanent damage, so it wasn't that far of a stretch to imagine what the death of a Sorceress would do to her Knight.

  
"COLLAPSED. WHY?"

  
Seifer closed his eyes and snorted tiredly. "Guess the voices have come back. Not Ultimecia, though. Someone else."

  
"A new Sorceress, yanno?" Raijin asked, eyes wide.

  
"Seems I ain't the only man in her life. She wants Leonhart, too. Must be the leather.  Can't blame her, really."

…

  
Cloud stood in a city and wished, not for the first time, that the Cetra had just let him pass on. Didn't seem like such a complicated wish, really.

  
The last city he'd seen was Neo-Midgar, grey and cold and grimy with pollution, populated with hollow-eyed people that had narrowly survived Meteor and then Geostigma. But this city was warm and alive. Clean. There were gardens, and trees, and flowers were sprouting up from every patch of dirt between busy roads and walkways. But Aeris – no, the _Cetra_ – said this _was_ Midgar, just a few hundred years in the future and now its own city-state. Still the most technologically advanced place on earth.

  
The people he passed on the street weren't suspicious or calculating, didn't look at his SOLDIER eyes and freeze in terror, and the sight of his sword just earned strange, honestly curious looks. They talked loudly and amiably, nothing like the hushed murmurs of a war-torn population. He was relieved to realize that a fair number spoke a tongue that was close enough to Cloud's own that he could understand.  _How the hell am I going to do this?_

  
Hands in his pockets and slightly slouched out of habit, he set off in a random direction, figuring that if the Cetra hadn't bothered to tell him where to go then it wasn't his fault if he wasted time. He absently wondered if the few gil in his pocket would be considered money or museum artifacts, so he thought, hey, why not find out.

…

  
Marly Gordon was a young waitress with warm brown eyes who lived, if not happily then at least contentedly, with her father and two dogs out in the suburbs. She'd gotten her job at _The Warbling Chocobo_ to pay her way through a school that would give her the chance to become a SeeD doctor, in memory of her beloved grandfather. She was chatting with one of the regular patrons when someone walked into the restaurant, so she excused herself and headed towards the new customer.  The man that seated himself at the small table by the window was short and lean, a bit too much on the thin side, with fair hair that vaguely reminded her of the restaurant's namesake. She couldn't see his face, but it was hard to miss the sword that he swung with startling ease off his back and rested against the table.  Her smile wavered a bit before she straightened her shoulders.

  
"May I help you?"

  
He looked up at her, and if she hadn't had such an active imagination anyway she might've thought his eyes were…well, _glowing_ , like an active spell. After a long pause, he finally said quietly, "Just some tea, please."

  
Simple enough. She flashed a cheerful smile and turned on her heel. When she brought the small pot of steaming tea a few minutes later, the man was staring out the window with his chin propped on a hand and a distant expression on his face.

  
"Will that be all?" she asked. "A scone, maybe? Soup? Our cook makes a pretty mean raspberry pastry."

  
"Do you know a Squall Leonhart?"

  
" _Everyone_ knows Commander Leonhart," she replied immediately, then flushed when she realized how silly she'd sounded. "Well, not personally, of course. Don't you? I mean, he's _Commander Leonhart._ "  Even his _name_ was cool.

  
"I've been, uh, out of the loop for a while." He glanced up at her again. "Tell me about him."

  
She shrugged. "He was made a SeeD commander after he defeated Ultimecia and her Knight," which alone was enough to endear him to Esthar, even if he hadn't been President Loire's son. Some of her classmates thought he was the best thing to grace the earth since Hyne himself. _In leather._ "Youngest one ever, too. They say he's wicked with a gunblade but that he doesn't really leave Balamb Garden, I guess because he doesn't like the attention." He'd only ever given one or two interviews to the press himself, outside of official Garden business, and each time it had been short, to the point, and utterly devoid of any personal information. "Weird to think that he and the President are related. They're just so different, y'know?"

  
"Aah."

  
She smiled again, mostly because this guy looked like he could use a few, and wondered where his odd accent came from. Northern continent? Maybe up near Trabia? "Anything else I can help you with? Latest medical research, some celebrity gossip?"

  
He snorted softly and shook his head.

  
Later, when Marly was doing her rounds in the restaurant, she found her thoughts returning to the silent figure sitting in the corner, alone, cup of untouched tea long since gone cold. He looked like he was only a few years older than she, but his gaze made her feel like she was once again a little girl sitting on her grandfather's knee, listening to his deep voice tell her stories about what it was like being a mercenary before SeeD came along. Her grandfather had had a limp, the result of a battlefield wound that hadn't received a Cure quick enough to heal quite right, but she remembered his hands the most: big and dark, thick-fingered, crossed with pale scars and rough with calluses. Marly wondered if this stranger would have the same kind of hands under those gloves.

  
Near sunset the man stood, ready to leave, and Marly appeared at his side. He reached in his pockets to dump several gil coins on the table, then frowned.

  
"I don't have enough. If you could find your manager – "

  
"Don't worry about it," she said kindly. "It was just a cup of tea. On the house."

  
If anything, his frown only deepened. Marly was once again struck with how his eyes seemed to _glow_. "I don't want to take advantage of you."

  
Marly looked at him sternly. "Look, buddy, it's a nice thought, but don't worry about it. A single pot of tea isn't exactly going to send anyone into debt. Think of it as Estharian hospitality."

  
He stared at her for a long moment before nodding. "Thank you."

  
Then he slung that impossible sword over his shoulder and disappeared into the crowd outside. Marly picked up one of the gil and was confused to see a coin resembling some of the ones on display at the national history museum.

…

  
Once he knew what he was looking for, it wasn't difficult to find.

  
Cloud stared up at the imposing gates that led to the seat of Esthar's government. The building was several stories high and built like a palace, sitting behind a long stretch of garden, with intricately carved columns and walls and the Estharian seal set in rare metals over the double entrance doors.  With a silent leap, Cloud was on top of the surrounding stone wall where a convenient tree hid him from any casual passersby on the street or in the palace. Zack's illegal escapades (of which he remembered just enough to be glad he couldn't recall the details) and his time with AVALANCHE had taught him how to be a good little terrorist. Guards were at all the visible entrances, naturally, as well as a few cameras nestled into blind corners and crannies. A well-placed spell would take out the latter, but if Esthar was as good as it looked, the blow would probably just trigger a more hardcore back-up system.

  
C'mon, said Zack, what's the harm in trying? It'd just make the challenge more interesting.

  
The boy can't afford any more black marks on his record, Sephiroth reprimanded, and Cloud felt very small. Couldn't fail the general –

  
Well, no, it had been _Sephiroth_ that failed –

_  
Shut up shut up shut up!_

  
Cloud remembered when he'd failed the SOLDIER exam, how he'd been ready to leave in humiliated self-loathing to a town that hated him and a mother that probably should've been put in an institution; it was Sephiroth of all people that had pulled him aside, which was strange, because they might've been intimate in some ways but Cloud had never been stupid enough to think it was anything _more_ than that. (Right? That sounded right. Maybe. Maybe they _did_ have conversations outside of training? Except. No. People didn't like it when Cloud talked.)

  
Sephiroth had said, _You would give up your dream for so little?_ And when Cloud argued that _he_ was the general, he didn't have to worry about things like that _,_ the man told him, _Leave, then. SOLDIER has no use for cowards._ Which stung, worse than when Tifa's dad had beaten him for his little girl's accident, but it did what Zack's wheedling couldn't and made him choose to stay. Maybe if Nibelheim hadn't gone up like a fucking blowtorch –

  
Felt like yesterday.

 _  
Don't think about that_.

  
Cloud sat back on his heels to wait for the sun to finish setting, carefully thinking about nothing at all.


	4. In Which Shiva Gets Possessive

The day that a young barista wondered if she'd been paid in stolen museum relics, Rinoa was covered in so much dirt and sweat that no one should've recognized her.  Straightening her protesting back, Rinoa wiped the sweat from her brow and gave a tired smile to the man offering her a plastic cup of water.  "Thanks," she sighed. The cool water soothed the dust in her throat.

The man, an older gentleman with salt-and-pepper hair, grinned. "Hey, you're doing the work of three people out here. Least I can do."

There were whole crews of people clearing out the rubble left from Ultimecia's destruction and others beginning to rebuild in the places that had already been cleaned up. Rinoa was helping to carry the timber splintered beyond usefulness to an already enormous woodpile, which would be reused as fuel.

She handed the empty cup back to the man with another grateful smile and glanced down ruefully at her filthy clothes. "I only wish there was more I could do," she sighed. "There's still so much to do, and so many people without a place to go…"

"You wanna know something?" the man interrupted smoothly, gesturing at the construction going on around them. "Honestly, I think something like this _needed_ to happen."

Rinoa gave him a strange look.

"Hey, I know you didn't grow up 'round here, but look. People are actually working together for once, and for Galbadians, that's pretty unusual."

That didn't make her feel much better. Almost no one had recognized her name, and no one outside of SeeD and Esthar's government had any knowledge of her being a Sorceress, but seeing the destruction that a Sorceress had caused made her want to prove that not _all_ of them were cruel, that her magic could be used to help and heal as well.

"Are you all right?" the man asked worriedly as Rinoa rubbed the heel of a hand against her temple.

"Just the sun, I think." Pushing aside the growing headache, she raised her empty cup and added, "This'll help."

"Well, I'd best be moving on, m'dear," he said cheerfully as he hefted the water pack over his shoulder. "Be careful now, don't work yourself into a collapse."

"Thank you," Rinoa called, and waved as he walked on.

She threw herself back into the work. When some of the workers started singing a lewd old bar song, she even managed to contribute a few lines. Here, there was no flash of weaponry, no sense that behind a friendly face was a contract killer. The Galbadians were angry and scared about having to rebuild their lives, but these were _normal_ concerns, these were people she could know and understand.

 _I'm sorry, Squall. You frightened me._ Her small body struggled to lift a heavy beam, and she managed a smile at the two girls who dashed over to help.  _We never made each other happy, and…it's like you left part of yourself behind at the end._

When the beam was moved, she paused to tie back the hair beginning to stick to her sweaty cheeks.

"Miss Rinoa? Are you okay?"

Rinoa started before managing a smile. "I'm fine. Is everything all right?"

The girl shook her head. "I'm sorry, you just…looked kind of sad. Is there anything I can do?"

Rinoa's smile felt less forced. "Just thinking, is all. Come on, want to take a lunch break with me?"

It was getting into early evening when Rinoa first felt that something was wrong. The girl was pleasant company. Lunch was iced tea and sandwiches donated by a kindly old woman, and the two chatted in the weak shade of a tree away from the chaos of construction. Rinoa had thought her headache was caused by the heat and exertion, but instead of lunch making it better the space behind her eyes began throbbing steadily. She groaned.

"Rinoa?" the girl asked hesitantly.

"Ah, sorry, just a headache." Rinoa's smile came out more like a grimace. She got to her feet and brushed off the seat of her trousers, then held out a hand. "C'mon, we should get probably get back in there."

The girl took her hand but gave her a scrutinizing look. "You sure? You look kinda pale."

"I'll be _fine_ ," she said, and though the girl looked dubious she followed Rinoa back to the nearest construction job.

Focusing on something else eventually allowed Rinoa to forget the headache. Sweat and aching muscles and watching something be rebuilt beneath her hands was cleansing, in its own way; there were no weapons, no exchange of gil for human life.

An enormous length of a beam was refusing to be budged and had already left several long splinters in people's soft palms. Rinoa looked left, then right, checking that the people around her weren't looking in her direction, and then surreptitiously pointed a finger at the stubborn beam.

Wood and stone were blown into pieces, shattered with the force of an explosion. Rinoa and everyone within five meters were forcibly lifted off their feet and thrown backwards, and Rinoa was halted mid-flight by her back slamming into a crumbling brick wall.  She managed to wonder what the hell had just happened before she blacked out.

…

_Squall dreamed of silent, snow-covered forests, ice-toothed caves, and bitterly frozen winds. Cold arms slid around his waist from behind._

My lovely little lion. _Shiva's voice echoed as though it had to pass a great distance to reach him, even when she held him so close that her breath would've wafted against his neck if she'd had any._ You're restless. Lions weren't meant to be tamed, much less fall asleep from exhaustion.

" _I have obligations," Squall told her, looking ahead blindly._

 _When she laughed, it sounded like the cracking of ice._ You forget I know you better than yourself.

_Squall frowned.  The memories he'd given up for her were in her possession, fueling her power, but it was fucking terrifying sometimes to have someone so intimately aware of him._

You should find him. The fiery one. _There was a slight distaste in her voice. She'd never been very compatible with people whose blood ran hot._

"… _What?"_

The one that hurt you.

" _Seifer didn't hurt me," Squall denied automatically, then wanted to smack himself. "He's a liability. He's too skilled and unpredictable to be allowed among civilians."_

If he were truly so dangerous, you would have already seen him causing chaos.

… _That wasn't the point.  Shiva, of course, knew exactly what he was thinking._ You're lying to yourself, my little lion.

_Squall's expression twisted into what was decidedly not at all a sulk. He opened his mouth to argue –_

– _and Shiva's arms suddenly tightened around him until Squall felt his ribs creak in protest. The landscape around him heaved and rolled under his feet like an earthquake, and the air felt oppressive, expectant._ Leave us!

_The Guardian Force's voice was a scream of rage and power. Squall gasped aloud for breath as her arms tightened and the light of her Diamond Dust shattered the air, attacking something he couldn't see or hear or feel.  An unnatural cry reverberated in his bones. An ache was building in his temples._

_Then Shiva was howling aloud and Squall was torn from her grasp, thrown into a blackness so deep he briefly wondered if he was dying. The sudden silence, the lack of white snow, the loudness of his panting with bruised ribs was shocking as he tried to sense_ something _other than this impenetrable darkness. Squall knew he was alone from the unmistakable emptiness that came from un-Junctioning. He missed the comfort of Lion Heart's well-worn leather hilt as the ache in his head deepened to a pounding agony.  Hissing, Squall fell to his knees with his skull cradled in his hands, teeth gritted, biting through his tongue and filling his mouth with blood._

_**my son** _

_**you said you'd be my knight** _

" _Rinoa – ?"_

_**you said you'd always be there for me** _

_**my precious son** _

…

By all rights, Laguna should've been asleep hours ago, but the world seemed determined to throw as many conferences, alarmed scientists, and angry politicians as it could to see when he'd start screaming his fool head off. With Ward in the north keeping the Estharian scientists company and with Kiros doing his own duties, Laguna was tempted to sneak out and go mercenary again.

He walked into his office with a pile of papers and a loud yawn. It was a typical office, as far as the presidential ones went, though without many books on the shelves and a wide collection of tacky figurines instead. A truly horrid potted plant took up a corner and one of the drawers in his desk had somehow, magically, turned into a liquor cabinet, and Laguna had looked at Kiros with wide eyes and bewilderment when Kiros asked.  Foregoing the light with the confidence of one who has spent far too much time in one place, Laguna unceremoniously tossed the papers onto his desk and went straight to the wide window. It faced a large part of the city, and in the gloom of nightfall he could see all the multicolored, twinkling lights of his people.  Behind him was the near-silent sound of shifting clothing. 

Old instincts kicking in, Laguna dropped to the ground and struck out with a knife he kept in the back of his wide belt. A soft curse broke the quiet and then there was a powerful grip on the back of his neck, another hand with incredible strength forcing him to drop the weapon.

"I'm not here to kill you," said the intruder. "I just want to ask a few questions."

"You ever thought about using a phone?"

"…No."

Laguna shifted slightly and the grip on the back of his neck tightened. He prudently held still.

"I need to talk to Squall Leonhart."

"What?"

"Leonhart."

"Yeah, I heard that, but…what?"

The stranger loosened his grip and Laguna was immediately swiping the knife off the floor and dancing out of reach. His assailant was much shorter than he would've guessed with spiky hair that might've been yellow, judging from the dim light coming in through the window.  "Zell? What the hell are you doing?" And hey, Laguna was always good for a practical joke, but this? What the hell. But then he realized that Zell's voice wasn't nearly so low and flat, nor his body so still. "Wait, who are you?"

A slight pause, then, "Cloud Strife. I need to speak with Leonhart immediately, and you're the most obvious person who would know how to do that."

He faintly reminded Laguna of his son. "You seriously broke into the capitol for _this._ "

"…Yes."

"…Right. I'm gonna turn on a light. You attack me, I attack back."

Laguna flipped the switch by the door, taking a moment to adjust to the sudden light. He resembled Zell less than Laguna had thought, but at least he didn't look insane, definitely not like an assassin or jilted lover (though Laguna had never seen any indication of his son being in anyone _that way_ except maybe Rinoa, although even that hadn't lasted long, and anyway no one ever knew for _sure_ , and Laguna had always tried to keep an open mind about these things.  Except then he realized he was imagining what kind of sexual exploits his technically-still-teenaged son was getting up to and his brain broke a little and _he was not thinking about this anymore where is that liquor cabinet)._

"What do you want with Squall?" Because Strife didn't seem like the kind of guy who did much small-talk. _(So, taking presidents hostage, is this a hobby? I hear macramé is a little less traumatic.)_

"It's about the last Sorceress," Strife said quietly, and Laguna was promptly all seriousness.

"What would you know about that?"

"She wasn't the last one. And she wasn't much more than a…puppet." He tripped a little over that last word. "I need to talk to Leonhart."

"Where'd you get this information?" Laguna demanded, because he was _Esthar's president_ and shit like this should've been brought to his desk at the slightest whisper of a rumor.

"Please. Let me talk to Leonhart."

One track mind. "Fine. Have a seat, I'll get him on the vid."

…

The monsters may have looked a little different, but their viciousness never changed. Vincent followed the hordes that seemed to be migrating from the Northern Crater, wondering why now, and why the Northern Crater. Between this and his awakening after so many years, it didn't seem like a coincidence.

At least the constant battling was warming the blood in his cold veins and sharpening skills that had gone rather rusty. He had yet to come across any human settlements, which meant there wasn't any slaughtering of civilians, but also that he couldn't replace the clothes threatening to fall off at any moment.  At one point Vincent caught his reflection in a smooth stretch of ice and found an unchanged face staring back. CHAOS laughed behind his thoughts.

After a few days of travel with the monster hordes thinning out and wandering aimlessly, he discovered that Icicle no longer existed. It took crossing a narrow strait _–_ thankfully just wide enough to discourage the monsters from swimming _–_ in the hold of a fishing ship before the first signs of civilization appeared. _Welcome to Kinevar [Dollet west],_ a faded, waterlogged sign greeted him on the edge of one of those fishing shanty-towns that tended to appear on the outskirts of coastal cities. There was a faint light shining in the coming twilight, and he slipped from the ship with no one any the wiser.

Vincent was very, very good at not being seen. He moved through the shadows towards the nearest ramshackle house and broke the lock on the back door with a claw, and by the time the moon rose he was back outside in worn trousers and a black long-sleeved shirt, both chosen for their warmth and ease of movement. In a moment of sentimentality he'd also filched a length of thick red cloth from someone's sewing closet, and taken a knife to his ridiculously long hair so that it hit the middle of his back once more rather than being twisted round his bony knees. 

Monsters had led him to civilization and the smell of alcohol led him to the people. It was a stereotypical fishing tavern, rundown and dimly lit, reeking of fish and salt and human sweat. For a moment he was back on the _Highwind_ , hovering in the shadows behind Cid as the man smoked and swore out all the cryptic creepy Turks and ninja thieves and schizophrenic SOLDIERs of the world.  He didn't see any immediate threat at first glance, but he still made sure his face was shadowed by his new cloak as he casually entered and seated himself at the bar near the door. He was close enough to listen to the conversation of a group of men, but there wasn't much more there than sexist commentary on loose women and how crappy this weather was for work. A positively ancient transistor radio on the counter behind the bar crackled grumpily.

" – _Estharian scientists claim,_ " said a plastic voice through the intermittent static. _"However, they caution the public that there's no proof of these new monsters, and if there are, they've assured that they will hire SeeD experts to contain and study the new species for future control. In other news, a woman in Timber has claimed to have given birth to Hyne's child – "_

 _No proof indeed_ , Vincent thought dryly.

"What you be wantin', buddy?" came a gruff loud voice, and the barkeep would've startled Vincent if he hadn't walked as heavily as a dragon.

"A pint of whatever's on tap," he said, his voice gravelly.

The man was covered in tattoos and enough sinewy muscle to bench press the Sister Ray, but his black-toothed grin was cheerful enough when he plunked down a greasy tankard in front of Vincent.

" _Reports are coming in from Dollet of an attack by unknown creatures on the people – a slaughter – "_

"How far is Dollet from here?" Vincent asked, but the barkeep just blinked at him.

"What d'you want to know that for?"

Vincent's claw hand lashed out and grabbed the front of the man's shirt, dragging him halfway over the bar and getting up in his face. "How far is Dollet?" he asked again quietly.

"A-about twenty miles west of 'ere," the barkeep stammered, terrified by a dark voice and blood-red eyes and what was possibly an aggressive overreaction.  In a dramatic streak of red and black Vincent disappeared without another word, leaving behind a tavern of fishermen that wondered if they'd just seen a devil.

 


	5. In Which Seifer Irritates Vincent

Life, Seifer decided, pretty much sucked ass. Childhood abandonment, failed the SeeD exam _three times_ , got seduced by an evil Sorceress wearing the face of his surrogate mother – and he really didn't want to examine the implications of _that_ too closely – had his ass kicked by one of the kids he used to bully, and now he couldn't tell right from left or remember what he had for breakfast.

Maybe the last was to be expected, since it wasn't long afterwards that a horde of monsters _entirely out of the blue_ decided that Dollet would make an awesome slaughtering ground. He, Fujin, and Raijin stood on the front porch of their rented cottage and watched the approaching apocalypse. Because of the late hour, fortunately, there were few people out, and the monsters didn't seem interested in busting down doors or windows so much as just rampaging through the empty streets.

"Fuck my life," he muttered.

"IDIOT."

Seifer shot Fujin a sulky look before looking back down the road. The horde didn't even begin to approach the Lunar Cry in terms of sheer monstrous volume, but _damn_ if it wasn't still intimidating as hell seeing a roiling mass of mutated flesh lit up in stark shadow by the streetlamps.

"Coulda been worse, yanno," said Raijin. "They might've been T-rexaurs."

Oh, the optimism of youth.

"Where's Leonhart when you need him?" Seifer sighed rhetorically as he hefted Hyperion and shot the nearest monster point-blank in the face. The thing squealed piercingly and twisted through the air, landing awkwardly on its side, but rather than stay dead it started to struggle back to its feet.  Seifer had quite clearly seen his bullet splatter skull and brain over the pavement.

"…FUCK."

"Holy Hyne, what the fuck _are_ these things?" he snarled, leaping off the porch and ducking a swipe of claws that tried to take off his head. He heard Fujin and Raijin follow him like they always did and he fell into the old pattern of _shoot-slash-parry-dodge-hit_ that was so comforting in its familiarity. If he was no longer capable of daily life, at least he knew he could still kick some serious ass.

But even ass-kicking gunbladers get tired and eventually he slipped in some spilled viscera, sending himself straight to the ground just as a tentacle (seriously, what the _fuck)_ lashed out over his head.  He was emptying a clip into what looked like the bastard child of malboro and grat when a set of brassy claws gripped his arm, hauling him upright so quickly that his head spun, and it took a moment to realize that the claws were at the end of a _human_ limb.

"Did I mention my life sucks ass?"

"Can you still fight?" the stranger demanded harshly, and Seifer might not have been in his right mind but it was instinct to respond to such authority with a sneer.

"If you didn't have your fucking hands all over me," he snarled, and he was instantly released. The man just gave him a flat look from under long hair before unceremoniously raising an impressive-looking gun. He fired into the monsters with an accuracy that would make Kinneas green with envy.

Pissed off and confused, Seifer went back to what he did best and violently sliced a monster in two.

…

It took a will honed by centuries of patience to resist the bloodlust of the demons in his head. The smell of the dead beasts was thick and cloying in Vincent's sensitive nose, a sickly-sweet stench of blood and shredded meat with the underlying sting of mako, and it made the company in his head howl with maddened glee.

When the last of the monsters ended up in pieces on the ground, Vincent idly flicked the gore off his claws and holstered Death Penalty under his new cloak. A little ways off, the gunblader kicked at a corpse and muttered a string of heartfelt curses that would've done Highwind proud. Both he and the two others with him had fought with admirable skill that spoke of practical experience, although the woman was now limping from a wound in her lower leg and the tall brunet was looking rather wan. When the gunblader suddenly hissed and hunched over, hand going to his temple, Vincent's eyes narrowed.

"Oi, Seifer, you all right?" asked the big, muscled one, putting a hand on the gunblader's shoulder in concern.

"I'm fine," this Seifer snapped before he straightened and fixed a baleful glare on Vincent. "Who the fuck are you? And what the fuck are these?"

 _A stunningly diverse vocabulary._ Vincent raised a deeply unimpressed eyebrow and bent to examine one of the monsters, ignoring the large man's sound of disgust as he rolled the corpse over and prodded at one of its gaping wounds.

"You deaf, buddy?"

The blood that came away on his fingers was the typical purple of several monster species. Same thick viscosity, same stench, but when he rubbed his fingers together the blood developed the slightest of shimmers. Mako, or something very like it. Just as he'd started to suspect after crossing the strait and terrorizing, perhaps unnecessarily, the poor fishermen.

When he stood, Vincent felt every one of his years settle over his shoulders. He gave himself a moment to wonder if this was how Cloud had once felt. _Isn't it ironic, Hojo, that in trying to destroy what you hated most, you created the weapons that brought about your downfall._ Although it seemed that Jenova was just as difficult to kill as Turks and failed SOLDIER experiments, and while attributing this attack to Jenova was more than far-fetched, it _did_ make a horrible sort of sense. The distinctly familiar mutations, the coordination of this attack – monsters never attacked in such a mixed horde unless there was an outside factor controlling them – not to mention the disturbing similarity of Seifer's little fit to a certain other blond kid.  Other explanations included someone having found any of her remaining cells, or another member of Jenova's species entirely.

"These monsters aren't natural," Vincent said softly. Seifer opened his mouth, no doubt to make some smart-assed comment, but then shut it again with a sharp click of teeth.

"WHO?" asked the woman, apparently unconcerned by the blood streaming down her leg.

"The Calamity of the Heavens." He went back to poking thoughtfully at a corpse.

Seifer looked ready to either argue or throw something, but then he hissed and once more grasped at his hair with one hand. The other tightened around the hilt of his weapon.

"We should get you inside, yanno," the large man muttered, slipping an arm around his shoulders while the woman ducked under his other side. Vincent followed at a distance as the three limped awkwardly past a number of dead monsters and several houses, in which people pressed their terrified and awed faces against the windows _._

The three stumbled up the steps of a tiny cottage and fumbled their way inside, Seifer managing to throw a dark glare over the woman's head that threatened bodily harm if Vincent tried to get away. Vincent pushed the door closed as Seifer was wrestled, with much swearing and general verbal abuse and liberal soaking of clothes in gore, onto the sagging sofa. The woman sat beside him while the third of their party went in search of a medical kit.

"We'll try this again. Who the fuck are you and what the fuck were those?"

"My name is Vincent Valentine, and those monsters have been mutated into something stronger and faster than their natures intended." He saw no need to share his thoughts on mako or Jenova. Besides, he could be utterly wrong about all of this and the answer was simply a freak coincidence of nature. Stranger things had happened.

"WHY?" the woman demanded, and Vincent shrugged a shoulder.

"Great," Seifer growled under his breath, "just when you thought things couldn't get more screwed up – and I swear to Hyne that if I don't stop hallucinating Leonhart standing over in that corner then _someone's_ shit is getting fucked up. Shut up, you're glaring too loudly, Princess."

The woman and the man that reappeared from the bathroom exchanged looks.

"I'm Raijin, and this is Fujin," said Raijin as he kneeled in front of Fujin and took out a roll of bandages and a potion. He cast a glance at Seifer scowling poisonously at a corner of the room. "Thanks, yanno. Normally Seifer wouldn't have had much of a problem with such weak monsters, but, uh, he hasn't been feeling too great lately."

Vincent just tilted his head in acknowledgement and didn't say anything.

…

Seifer sat with his arms crossed and tried to remind himself that what he was seeing _wasn't real_.

Fujin's leg was bleeding and he needed to help her. To be fair, all three of them had sustained their share of scuffs and scrapes, but Leonhart was leaning against the far wall streaked with sweat and battle-filth with Lion Heart swinging loosely in one hand. The voice in his head was saying _kill him, kill the SeeD –_

What crawled up Leonhart's ass and died to make him scowl so deeply? "Shut up, you're glaring too loudly, Princess."

Leonhart's pretty eyes narrowed even further and he shifted his stance, making his belts clink. Which didn't really help, because Seifer had once gotten to see exactly what was under all that leather and he knew the real thing smelled as much like gunpowder and weapon grease as this hallucination…

…but he was also standing _right there_ and _oh, Ice Princess, seems you're fucking up in your old age. The Sorceress isn't dead, I felt her call her Knight, but it isn't just me she's after…_

If you didn't have more brawn than brains –

_Fuck off, Princess, this ain't my Hyne-damned fault. I know you're jealous of this prime piece of flesh, but please, try to contain yourself. Think of the children._

Lion Heart was rising in a double-handed swing that Seifer recognized immediately as the gesture that had nearly split his head in two.  _It was storming, wasn't it, and for a moment I thought you were part of it, Squall-the-squall_. Ha.  Lion Heart was coming towards him and Seifer couldn't allow him to win like he always, _always_ did; Hyperion flashed outwards –

– then Raijin was pinning him down and Seifer watched Lion Heart rip through him, and the _once a Knight always a Knight_ screamed, _You idiot, you motherfucking moron, did you think Leonhart wouldn't kill you, that cold son of a bitch, what were you thinking trying to save me, Rai?_

And why was Fujin standing there, doing nothing, looking as impassive as that bastard Leonhart save for the sadness in her eye.  And who _has the red eyes of a devil -  
_

"Seifer," Raijin cried, who was still alive even though Lion Heart was sticking through his back like an overlarge toothpick, "Leonhart's in Garden, yanno, no one's there!"

Seifer was about to point out that everyone was apparently really fucking blind, except someone cast a spell and he couldn't do much of anything.

…

 _The blackness slid along Squall's flesh, sucking away the warmth and life, violating his body and his mind until he wasn't sure where he ended and_ _**it** _ _began. A poison-green tendril glowed in the darkness, wrapped itself around his heart, and it felt like drowning._

 _Through the pain and the terror he dimly recognized a person, a man, with narrow feline eyes as green as the poison and hair as pale as Shiva's snow._ " _Mother will tear you apart."_

Squall woke up and promptly tumbled off the bed in a heap of flailing limbs and sweat-soaked sheets. He scuttled backwards to press his back against the wall, wrapping his arms around his knees with his chest heaving. 

After long minutes of his harsh breathing sounding unnaturally loud in the silence of his quarters, Squall closed his eyes and let his head thump back against the wall. The ghostly sensation of Shiva's arms slid around his waist, giving him the comfort of the cold in the face of dreams that were starting to seem a little too real, although he'd never heard Rinoa's voice sounding so inhumanly _furious_.  _Get a grip, Leonhart_ , he sneered at himself.

He must have sat there for a good hour before the vid-phone started beeping, and the gun he kept under his pillow was in his hand and trained on the damn machine before he realized what it was. As Shiva's presence melted away, he stiffly managed to get to his feet and untangle himself from the sheet before falling heavily into his desk chair, setting the pistol to the side of the phone.

"Leonhart," he snapped. When he saw his father's face, he resisted the urge to go ahead and shoot.

"… _Squall? Did I, uh, interrupt something?"_

He glanced down at himself, belatedly realizing that he was wearing nothing but sleeping boxers and that the bed behind him was suspiciously rumpled. He scowled at the screen and was vindictively satisfied when Laguna choked on a swallow and said, _"Ah, right. Well, I have someone who wants to speak with you. He even broke into the capitol to do so, and seriously, who does that?"_

Desperate people. "Fine."

Laguna stepped aside. Squall would later deny that his jaw dropped when Cloud Strife sat down.

…

Cloud had to admit that he was pretty damn amused when the normally apathetic Squall looked absolutely floored.

"Leonhart."

_"Strife."_

Squall was justifiably incredulous. The kid didn't seem like the type prone to much imagination, Cloud thought dryly, no doubt he'd convinced himself that he'd just dreamed up the whole Lifestream thing. But then Cloud's gaze sharpened, noticing the sweat on Squall's brow, the shadows under his eyes, and the way he was tapping a handgun in an unsettled tic.  "Listen," Cloud started quietly, "Ultimecia wasn't the last Sorceress."

Suddenly the kid was Commander Leonhart, all business and no hesitation. _"Explain."_

"Years ago an alien called Jenova came to the Planet. She was defeated when she tried to destroy the world, but her…essence infiltrated the Lifestream. As far as I can tell, she's the one that's been creating these Sorceresses. Not consciously, more like – a virus, infecting them and still trying to destroy the Planet."

 _"Sorceresses were created by Hyne,"_ Leonhart said sharply, _"not…space aliens."_

Well, gee, when it was put like that. "Does it really matter? Either way, there's another one."

 _"And what's_ your _relation with this Jenova?"_

"I…was there, when she tried to kill everything."

Laguna made a sound of incredulity behind him, but Leonhart just looked thoughtful, if still disbelieving of the whole story. _"Why now?"_

Cloud hesitated, having seriously not considered that. The Cetra hadn't exactly been very forthcoming (they never were, let their favorite weapon wallow in guilt and misery for a few centuries and he'll be easier to mold into what they really want, but don't think like that, it'll lead to madness).  "Maybe it has something to do with whatever Ultimecia did. I don't know." The fact that Leonhart didn't seem to be having an issue with the inconsistencies of timelines suggested it wasn't a new idea to him.  Odd.

 _"Laguna,"_ Leonhart said suddenly, making the president jump, _"I'll be sending the_ Ragnarok _as soon as possible to pick up Strife."_

The vid-screen went abruptly dark. Laguna sighed gustily.  "I guess hoping Squall was in bed with someone was too much."

Cloud stared at him.  Laguna flushed. "I mean, he's just so closed off from everyone, the only time he ever reacts is when he's confronted with someone he thinks is being less than efficient – "

_("Don't worry about it, Cloud, if he gets mad, it means he likes you. Usually he just ignores the rest of the world.")_

_("I didn't mean to anger him…")_

_("Hey, we've still got that mission to Nibelheim, right? You can make it up to him then.")_

The winters in Nibelheim had always been particularly cold.


	6. In Which Cloud and Squall Have a Conversation with Two Words

The _Ragnarok_ was a monstrous construct of sharp angles and blood-red paint, looking more like a stationary predator than an airship; Quistis could see why Selphie might be accused of sexual harassment every time she was in the pilot's seat. Selphie was currently in said seat, vibrating with energy, hands hovering over the controls and shooting Quistis looks that demanded satisfaction. That it was five in the morning didn't seem to bother her.

"Where's Squall?" she whined, twisting around in her seat to look high and low in the passenger area as though he was hiding in the ventilation. Irvine shrugged, not bothering to look up from under his hat, and Zell had already fallen back to asleep.

"He's talking with the hangar manager," Quistis managed through a yawn. "Wants to make sure _Ragnarok's_ up for a flight to Esthar."

"More like scaring the shit out of people trying to do their jobs," Selphie muttered, and Quistis coughed to hide her laugh.

Finally the ship gave a familiar light jerk as the main hydraulic door closed. Squall appeared a few minutes later, fully dressed and wide awake enough to put his subordinates to shame. Quistis was wondering for the millionth time exactly _why_ he'd appeared at their respective quarters at _four-thirty in the morning,_ with orders to prepare for a trip to Esthar, when he barked, "Set a course for the airbase."

Selphie grinned, shot off a mocking salute, and took to the controls with a rather unsettling cackle of glee. As soon as Squall took a seat on one of the benches opposite a snoring Zell, Quistis was at his side. "So, you going to tell us why we're going halfway across the world before sunrise?"  When Squall didn't reply she sighed and leaned back against the wall. "We're all worried about you, you know." She glanced at him from the corners of her eyes. "You've been harsher than usual. Selphie thinks it's because of Rinoa leaving, but that's not it, is it? You've been like this since the Time Compression."

He stared at the far wall and imitated a rock with impressive talent.

"Your secretary says you're usually there before her in the morning and still there when she leaves. She says she once found you asleep on your desk."

His brows furrowed, which for someone like Squall was the equivalent of cursing up a blue streak. Unfortunately for him the airship didn't provide much opportunity for him to slip away and hide. "I still sleep in my quarters. I still eat."

"The fact that you have to reassure me that you're maintaining the minimum to keep living is worrying in and of itself."  His scowl deepened.  "We've all tried not to push you, Squall, but honestly, I'm getting tired of watching you run yourself into the ground. You might've saved the world, but you're only human."

"Rinoa's leaving was a mutual agreement," he admitted, albeit without much emotion, and Quistis immediately made sure that she didn't lean towards him or touch him, which would shut him up as fast as a bear trap.

"But it still hurt, didn't it? Squall, that's natural. You get hurt, you move on."

He shot her an irritated look suspiciously like _thank you for that condescending observation._ "I've been having dreams," he said abruptly. "About being called by Rinoa, as a Sorceress. We're going to go pick up someone who might be able to help."

And with the way Squall tended to drop these bombs on people, thank Hyne that he wasn't usually needed during delicate diplomacy missions, it was a miracle he hadn't been strangled yet. "Wait, _what?_ "

"I'm Rinoa's Knight," he said slowly, "and she's calling me."

"…Oh. Well. That. Doesn't sound good."

Squall didn't bother to respond, just stared at the far wall with his arms crossed, obviously sunk deep into his thoughts. Irvine had slumped farther in his seat, his hat over his face, and Zell sprawled across the bench with a leg tossed haphazardly over the cowboy's lap.  _Isn't this going to be fun._

The sun was starting to creep in through the small windows when Selphie suddenly sang, "We're here!"

Zell awoke with a snort and tumbled off the bench while Irvine twitched. Quistis snickered. Squall stood up and braced himself against the wall as Selphie went on, " _Hey_ , Esthar, the sun's hardly risen and the new day's already starting! Get up off your lazy asses and let us down, I'm _starving_. Oh, Sir Laguna! How's it going being president?"

There was tinny laughter from the radio. _"You wouldn't_ believe _the paperwork. I swear I wake up at night scrawling my signature all over the walls, and Kiros never lets me drink anymore after that dinner with this ambassador and I_ swear _it wasn't my fault_."

Selphie was grinning. "Man, you should've seen Squally the one time we got some booze into him – "

Squall gently but firmly pushed Selphie to one side. "Is Strife with you?"

" _Oh, uh, yes, Squall, but – "_

Squall switched channels. " _Ragnarok_ to airbase, Balamb SeeD Commander Squall Leonhart requesting permission to land for state business."

" _Airbase to_ Ragnarok _, permission granted_ ," the captain replied, rattling off coordinates.

"That was rude," Selphie pouted, but she obediently started preparing the ship for landing. He just stared out the windshield and didn't seem to hear her.

…

The reflection of sunlight flashed off the underbelly of the airship as Laguna shifted from foot to foot impatiently.

"They'll be here," Kiros told him dryly, tranquil as a mountain glen, damn him.

"I _know_ , but this is the kind of thing I want to get over with," he muttered. His eyes slid towards Cloud standing several feet away, enormous sword protruding over his shoulder and looking more like a statue than a living person as he stared up at the _Ragnarok_.

"I've never heard Squall or the others speak of this Strife," Kiros murmured, following Laguna's line of sight. "Have you asked your son about him?"

Laguna snorted. It was a surprisingly bitter sound. "Even if I had, I probably would've just gotten a blank stare." He hadn't even heard about the breakup with Rinoa until Selphie let it slip a few days ago. When he asked if Squall was talking to anyone about it, Selphie gave him a strange look and asked if T-rexaurs had learned to fly yet.

Laguna felt the effect of the ship's engines vibrating in his chest as gales of dusty wind forced him to take several steps back. It shuddered as it touched down and taxied towards the hangar, and when the engines died the hangar assistants flew into action. Laguna stuck a finger in his ear and wiggled it, wincing at the sudden silence.

"How was the flight?" he called out as Squall exited the ship, closely followed by the other SeeDs.

"It was fine, thank you, Laguna," Quistis said, suppressing a yawn. Irvine and Zell were slouching along while Selphie smiled at Laguna with all the cheeriness of her yellow chocobo barrettes.  Squall gave Laguna and Kiros a nod of acknowledgement before heading straight for Strife.

Now, watching Leonhart approach instigated a number of mental loops in Cloud's mind. One part was tempted to grin rakishly and crack a joke; another wanted to stand tall and school his face into perfect cool; a third, the oldest, part was poised between fight-or-flight. Ultimately he chose to just stand there and wait and pretend not to notice that the younger commander was also taller.

"Strife," said Leonhart coolly.

"Leonhart," Cloud replied flatly. Somewhere behind Leonhart the girl in the yellow dress managed to actually guffaw with laughter. Cloud wasn't sure what was so funny.

…

_Seifer walked a barren plain that had no sound, smell, or sensation. His hands and feet bled and he thought blood might also be spilling over his lips, down his chin. Overhead the sky was the black and blue of a bruise, faintly grey-green like dead flesh, twisting and wriggling as though there were maggots on the other side. It was the end of the world and the end of time and there was nothing but an unending, unbroken horizon on all sides._

_When he realized he wasn't alone, he whipped around, reaching for a gunblade he wasn't carrying and snarling, "Who the fuck are you?" His voice came out tired and thin._

_The man smiled bitterly. "Would you speak to a god like that, boy?"_

_"Apparently."_

_The man just arched a brow._ " _Mother will punish you."_

" _The_ hell _'re you talking about?" Seifer snarled, lashing out, but Hyperion was caught by another sword with a shriek and a shower of sparks. The man's sword was longer than either of them was tall, long and razor-sharp and made for the kind of slashing that left opponents in little pieces._

_What was strange, though, even in the midst of all this decay and barrenness, was that the man's expression was blank. Expressionless. He wasn't looking at Seifer so much as through him, and although Seifer was straining and sweating against the lock of their blades the man hardly appeared to notice. He said mildly, "Tell Cloud that I will not remain a memory."_

_Behind the man's shoulder flexed a single dark wing, the feathers flaring out and obscuring the rotten sky, but then the man shoved him back and his sword flickered out, bit deeply into his shoulder –_

– and there was someone holding him down against a cushion, but wasn't Raijin supposed to be dead?  Seifer struggled until Raijin released him and he sat up defensively against the armrest of the sofa, not immediately realizing that the growl he was hearing came from his own throat.

"SEIFER?"

 _Holy shit, you sad fucker, you really are going insane_. There were bruises already beginning to form across Raijin's bare arms. "What the hell?" he croaked.

"Uh, Seifer, you're bleeding, yanno?"

Seifer stared at him blankly until he recognized there was pain searing through his shoulder, and then he flinched, hissing. A gash had opened itself in the flesh, just below the clavicle and a scant few centimeters from the joint itself, and was too obviously from a blade. Blood was dripping heavily down his arm and the front of his sleeveless shirt.

"Whoa," said Raijin eloquently.

"That's me, the Human fucking Wonder," Seifer muttered, still sounding like his throat was smoked out. A shadow near the door resolved itself into that new guy…Valentine? Some name that belonged in a porno, anyway, and Valentine was giving him the kind of dissecting stare that Quistis had been so damn good at.

"What did you see?" the guy asked, and if Seifer ever again felt strong enough to at least take on a five-year-old kid and win, he might mention that the porn industry would love to have that voice.

"Lollipops and candy canes."

"SEIFER."

Seifer scowled. "It was just a dream," he muttered, tasting the lie. The wound in his shoulder throbbed as Raijin grabbed a medical kit sitting by Fujin's freshly-wrapped leg and sat on the edge of the sofa. It had felt more like those hallucinations he'd been having since Ultimecia's death, or maybe memories, whatever, he didn't have any fucking clue what was going on in his own head anymore.

"That was no dream," said Valentine, and Seifer snapped, "Thank you, Captain Obvious. Who let the vampire in the house anyway?"

"What kind of sword did this?" Raijin asked with a note that almost sounded like awe as he wiped away the blood.

"Fucker's blade must've been six, seven feet long."

Valentine moved so quickly that none of the other three had a chance to react before he was leaning over Seifer, claw clamped around his unwounded shoulder. "What did he say?"

"Hey!" cried Raijin, getting ready for some serious manhandling, and Fujin was struggling for the knife in her boot when Seifer barked, "Calm down!"  Meeting Valentine's eyes, he said, "Back the fuck off and I'll tell you," and waited until the guy had taken a few steps away. "He didn't give me a name, just said his mother would punish me and to tell Cloud, or _a_ cloud, I don't know, that he wasn't gonna stay a memory."

It obviously meant something to Valentine, who withdrew towards the shadows near the door again in brooding silence.

"Yo, you maybe wanna share with the class? Explain why I'm sittin' here with a fucking _hole_ in my shoulder?" Seifer asked testily, but from ancient history with Squall he recognized the silence as one that would last as long as the brooder damn well pleased.

"Fuck my life," he grumbled as Raijin, still casting wary looks at Valentine, started wrapping him in gauze.


	7. In Which There Are Conversations (and Aliens Are a Thing)

"Squally, we totally need to get some of these for Garden."

Selphie was happily spinning around in one of the plush chairs in the conference room, waiting for everyone else to take their own seats around the elliptical table. Squall ignored her in favor of leaning forward slightly and fixing his stare on Strife, directly across the table.

"You gonna tell us what this is about now?" Zell yawned, the sunlight that came through a high window lighting up his hair making him look like a disgruntled chocobo. Selphie started to reach out to pat him on the head, but Quistis smacked her hand away.

"Tell them what you told me," said Squall.

Strife glowered a bit, but he repeated, almost word for word, what he'd told Squall the night before over the vid-phone.

"Hold on. An alien?" repeated Zell.

"Yes," replied Strife.

"Really?"

Strife gave him a flat look.

"Right. Aliens are a 'go.'" When Squall put his head in his hands, Zell asked, "What?"

Kiros, sitting beside Laguna at one end of the table, hummed thoughtfully. "If the Lifestream is the source of life for everything, then why are only the Sorceresses affected?"

"It'd be hard to say," said Quistis. "We still don't actually know _how_ someone becomes a Sorceress, stories about Hyne aside."

"Wait," Selphie broke in suddenly, "Cloud, if you were there when Jenova was last time, how old _are_ you?"

Strife blinked. "I…don't know."

"Did you ever have a dinosaur for a pet?  Can you write in cuneiform?"

What Strife was actually going to say when he opened his mouth no one would ever know, since Quistis had whipped around in Squall's direction. "You once asked me if I'd ever heard of the Lifestream. If we're just meeting Strife today, how did _you_ know about it?"

Squall ran a hand through his hair irritably. "I told you that I've been having dreams. They may have included the Lifestream."

"And Strife was there?" Irvine asked mildly. Squall nodded once.

"The Lifestream is how you've been kept alive all these years," Quistis concluded shrewdly, shooting a look at Strife and getting another nod in return.

"So who _are_ you, exactly?" Laguna demanded, exasperated. "You come out of nowhere talking about Sorceresses and trying to take me hostage to make a _phone call_ – "

Strife shifted in his seat. "We're…no, _I_ am – _was a_ mercenary."

Squall's eyes narrowed at the apparent confusion of pronouns and verb tenses and thought that perhaps they'd need to keep an especially close eye on him. Shiva sent small, supportive wisps of cold curling through his thoughts.

...

On the other side of the table in the red corner, Cloud was wishing he was anywhere else. Should've seen the conferences Sephiroth was forced attend, Zack pointed out, but at least he had the Masamune. A hand on that hilt and Heidegger would shut up _real_ fast.

"So where's this Sorceress?" asked Irvine, lounging like a lazy housecat. "Doesn't Esthar monitor that kind of thing?"

"If we could find Sorceresses so easily, we'd know immediately anytime one of them was born," Laguna admitted. "But usually they don't even show until adolescence."

Quistis sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose, pushing her glasses askew. "So she could be anywhere right now."

"We do know _one_ Sorceress," Tilmitt-call-me-Selphie-you-cutie interjected, sounding weirdly timid as she glanced at their commander. Leonhart didn't react.

"You really think Rinoa would do anything, though?" Zell was frowning doubtfully. "Wouldn't she come to us if something was wrong?"

"Look at Edea," Quistis said softy, and the rest of the SeeDs went quiet.

Cloud broke in, "Jenova doesn't require a willing host, though it helps."

Leonhart looked skeptical. "What's Jenova after?"

_("Mother is the rightful ruler of this Planet.")_

"Domination. Cleansing the Planet of humanity."

_("I will be a god.")_

"As soon as we return to Garden, we'll need to track down Rinoa and Seifer," Leonhart was saying.

"Seifer?" Zell blinked.

"He was a Knight as well."

"What does being a Knight have to do with any of this, though?"

 _("Don't you two ever talk, Cloud? Like,_ outside _the bedroom?")_

 _("I'm worried about you, Spike. Sephiroth's not exactly the most…sensitive of people, and you're – no, Cloud, I'm not calling you worthless, but you're practically still a_ kid _and – please, don't look at me like that.")_

"If he was controlled by Ultimecia once – "

Cloud, who'd been staring out the window behind Zell, twitched and glanced at the commander. "Controlled how?"

"Sorceresses have Knights," Quistis explained. "Like their general or right-hand man. He isn't nearly as powerful, but he can still draw on her power."

Cloud stared at her and felt like Zack had just landed a blow in his stomach during a training session. _Meteor Crisis. Reunion_.  "How do these men become Knights?" he demanded, and didn't miss the way everyone looked at Leonhart.

"We don't know." His voice was completely flat. "I don't remember how I became a Knight."

"But it explains why you were able to get into the Lifestream."

Something in his voice must've been strange enough to tip off Quistis. "You all right, Cloud?"

"Jenova had what sounds like a Knight," he muttered, glancing down and letting his hair fall over his eyes. "He was a general.  He had a piece of her inside him and he nearly destroyed the world. If what you're saying about Knights is true then you're just as much of a liability as this Rinoa and Seifer, Leonhart."

Leonhart's eyes narrowed and, yes, there was the killer hiding behind a pretty face. Laguna and the SeeDs looked distinctly unhappy, but Cloud didn't think they'd noticed the tendrils of frost winding from under Leonhart's gloved hands and down the armrests of his chair.  Wasn't _that_ interesting.

"What about you?" Leonhart retorted. Cloud smiled humorlessly, already seeing in the kid that very human fear of losing control. It would be a cruel fate for him to defeat a Sorceress and her Knight once only to turn around and take one of those places himself, strung along a like a puppet and too drunk on power to see the strings. Better to die as yourself than as a monster.

"Don't worry, Leonhart. When the time comes, I won't hesitate."

He knew the commander would understand what he meant.

…

Rinoa stared into the tiny mirror over the bathroom sink and thought, _I'm going insane. Oh Hyne, Squall, help me, there's something wrong and I think I'm losing it_.

Someone knocked on her apartment door and called, "Rinoa, you in there? Are you okay? We were all worried, you never showed up at the site yesterday."

It was the girl with whom she'd had lunch the other day, sweet Amanda with a cat and a parakeet and a dream of being a veterinarian someday. Her voice, muffled by the door, made the _sickness_ under Rinoa's skin shiver.  "Go away!" Rinoa managed around the lump in her throat.

"What's wrong? Are you ill?"

_"Go away!"_

Then there was silence and she was alone. She'd skipped work because now whenever she saw someone she could picture their eyes exploding in their sockets, how easy it'd be, how defenseless their minds really were. Last night a bird had landed on her windowsill and an instant later it was a smear of blood and feathers on the wood.  Her reflection's eyes were bloodshot, silky hair tangled in a two-day-old braid, the salty grime of tears left on her cheeks. She looked like shit and felt like hell.

_**Why waste divine power on the unworthy?** _

It'd started with dreams but now she was hearing a voice, _that voice_ , all the time, and Hyne, gods, she really was going insane.

 _You can't judge anyone's life as 'unworthy,'_ she argued.

_**The weak are meant to bow to the strong, to love them, to follow their will. It is the natural order.** _

Rinoa was unconsciously tipping closer to the mirror and she saw _Squall on the floor, unmoving, blood spattered over his bone-white face, eyes half-lidded and staring._

She jerked back with a cry, knocking her elbow against the porcelain, not closing her eyes fast enough to miss the poisonous green irises in her own eyes. SeeD was meant to control Sorceresses, she remembered, and she stumbled out of the bathroom, hitting her shoulder on the doorjamb hard enough that she was going to have a magnificent bruise there later. The vid-phone on the kitchen counter nearly fell out of her fumbling hands. No one answered the private lines of Squall, Quistis, Zell, or Selphie, and she prayed that the messages she left would be somewhat coherent.

_**They abandoned you. Take your vengeance.** _

_They're mercenaries, I knew that I never would've been able to live like that anyway, I made the choice to leave_ , but the voice didn't like that and the headache she'd had since her episode at the construction site flared into blinding agony. She fell on her knees and moaned.

_**It'll be worse if you fight, child.** _

…

"So this Sephiroth guy was taken over by a space alien named Jenova and tried to destroy the world, yanno?"

"Yes," said Vincent. It wasn't their fault if they didn't know the full extent of the tragedy and pain and madness caused by corporations, sadists, and men too broken to want anything other than death.

Seifer snorted, flopped back against the sofa cushions with a wince when he jostled his shoulder. "And you think this bitch is the reason why these monsters are so hard to kill."

"Yes."

"And Sephiroth is now in my head." Vincent just gave him a look. "So what's this 'cloud' he was talking about?"

Figuring the dead were best left to the past, Vincent shrugged silently.

"STAY?"

"Wait, what? Fu, what the hell?"

"Maybe she's right," Raijin argued. "He knows more than we do, anyway, yanno?"

"Yeah, whatever," he muttered, apparently starting to channel Leonhart.  Ah, craziness.

 


	8. In Which Garden Is Prettier than Midgar Ever Was

Cloud leaned against the metal wall of the _Ragnarok's_ interior and stared out the small window, watching the shadow of the ship flicker over the rolling of the ocean below. He'd crossed his arms out of habit, though the nausea in his belly wasn't entirely due to motion sickness.  _(He was crouched in the truck-bed in a miserable huddle, stomach twisting and jumping like the stones under the vehicle's tires. Zack was speaking in an undertone with the general, glanced at Cloud with a sympathetic half-smile, but Cloud was too – )_

"Pretty, huh?"

Cloud twitched when he realized Selphie had sneakily sidled up, and his stomach protested when he wondered, if she was the pilot, and if she was standing with him…?

"Don't worry, Cloudy, this baby's on autopilot and made this trip loads of times," she winked, leaning her elbows on the porthole sill and looking out. "You know, we grew up by the ocean," she went on unprompted, and though he hadn't asked to listen to her life story the nostalgia in her voice sent a pang of envy through Cloud's homeless heart. "When Matron went to bed we'd all sneak out to the lighthouse and tell ghost stories. Seifer was the best at it, of course, used to make Zell cry. Never managed to scare Squall, though. They usually just ended up beating the shit outta each other." She giggled. "Did you have anything like that?"

Cloud fixed his eyes on the ship's rippling shadow. "I don't remember."

Selphie gave him an uncomfortably piercing look, but then leaned forward to press her nose against the window and smear some prints. "If you're right about the Knights, then I'm afraid for Squally. I mean, he's an asshole sometimes, but he's _our_ asshole.  Uh.  Wait."

Too late, quipped Zack.

"But, um, same with Seifer, even after he ran off with Ultimecia. I don't think Squall ever really forgave him for leaving like that."

 _(The glass was cold against his overheated skin. Felt like snow and it was so fucking cold but he was burning up, body wracked with tremors and he thought he could hear Zack, faint and garbled by the thick glass and thicker mako. His world had narrowed down to sensation, like an animal, but there was a mantra in his head like the sound of a god and wasn't that ironic,_ whywhywhy Sephiroth _why – )_

 _Forgiveness_ for that kind of betrayal, who could possibly ask for it, and Cloud's fingers dug into his upper arms. Selphie was watching him sidelong, nose still smooshed against the window, all unexpected intensity in chocobo barrettes.  "I've only known you for like a couple hours, but you're cute and your sword is kick-ass. If Squall or Seifer do end up, like, going all doom on us – "

"I don't make promises," Cloud told her coldly.

Before Selphie could respond or he could leave, Quistis and Leonhart, who'd been clustered with the others near the cockpit door, appeared beside them. Now that he knew about the commander's Knighthood, Cloud could taste that unnatural taint to his presence even more strongly. Leonhart handed him a thick dossier without preamble. "What do you know about this?"

Cloud flipped through the papers, recognizing them as reports on monster statistics.

"This came from the Estharian scientists up near Dollet," Quistis said, not that that really meant anything to him. "They think these monsters are either an unusually evolved form of a currently known species or new ones altogether. We want to know if this is a coincidence or if it's related to Jenova."

 _No such thing as coincidence_ , he mused. A number caught his eye and he paused, peering more closely at the data and blurred photos. So familiar.  Shit.  "These have the Jenova factor. She's like a self-aware virus that can rewrite the genetics of a host and force mutations." He'd seen some of Hojo's other experiments, both for himself and through Zack's memories: twisted, mutilated things straight of a nightmare, made of flesh and metal and torture. Sephiroth may have been the logical genius of him, Zack, and Cloud, but Cloud had never been stupid and Hojo had always taken a sort of perverse pleasure in explaining what he was doing to his specimens.

"What happens?" Quistis asked.

"The host's genotype and, typically, phenotype are altered. Brain activity changes, endocrine system heightened, reaction time shortened. Increased muscle mass, denser bone structure." Of all the people to start channeling, Hojo probably wasn't the best. "The problem is the inevitable insanity."

Both Selphie and Quistis scrunched their faces with disgust, but Leonhart was staring at him with those piercing slate-grey eyes. Cloud snapped the dossier closed and handed it back to the commander, refusing to look away. "Basically, they turn into mean fuckers."

...

Before Selphie could drag off Cloud when the _Ragnarok_ landed at Garden, Squall pulled her aside. "Keep an eye on him. If he says anything strange, does anything suspicious, or demonstrates unusual interest in something, I want to know."

"Yessir," she replied seriously, knowing she was dealing with the SeeD commander at the moment. "You don't trust him." Then she smiled and put her hands behind her head, Strange Vision swinging lazily from her grip. "He strikes me as the kind of guy you can trust with your life but not the truth. And he's _really_ cute. Even if he had dinosaurs as pets."

Squall gave her an unimpressed look and she threw a sloppy salute, skipping back to Cloud. Squall slipped past the hangar maintenance crew and into the cool hallways of the school, heading towards his office and ignoring the mix of salutes and awed expressions from the students.

Xu was sitting behind his desk when he entered, nose buried in paperwork. She stood with a practiced salute and a tight smile. "Commander."

"Headmistress."

"We've gotten more reports of those monster sightings up north," she told him, "and more recruit applications. Galbadia's sent another request for war reparations, which of course will be denied." The presumptuousness would've irritated him if it'd been anyone other than Xu. A blinking red light on his vid-phone distracted him for a moment.

"Thank you, Xu. I and the SeeDs that accompanied me this morning will be leaving again tomorrow at oh-eight-hundred for an unknown amount of time. If you agree, I would like you to act as honorary commander until my return. I'll leave details. Is that acceptable?"

"Yes, sir." She bowed slightly and left.  Why couldn't the rest of the world operate with such efficiency?

Squall sat in his leather chair with an unwitting sigh. He took a moment to lean his elbows on his desk and run his fingers in circles over his temples before smacking the button for his personal line.

" _You have one new message._ "

Rinoa's face suddenly appeared on the vid-phone, her hair a rat's nest, her face drawn tight and pale with tension.  " _Squall, I need your help,"_ she pleaded, her voice practically a croak. " _I can't – I can't control my spells and I think if I go outside I'll hurt someone. Squall, it feels like there's something, something in my_ head _, I don't know, I don't think it's from Ultimecia or Adel. It feels too old and it's. It's."_ She was rambling and hysterical, and when she hung up Squall was pathetically grateful for the cold that Shiva bled through his suddenly numbed body.  It'd hurt, of course it'd hurt, to open up even a little to someone and have it turned back on him later, even if the break had been better for both him and Rinoa in the long run. The logic was sound but a bitter pill to swallow. Failure as a person and now failure as a Knight, whatever that meant, but that had always been Seifer's thing, not his. Thinking about Seifer wasn't exactly helping, and it looked like Strife's predictions about Jenova and Rinoa were already coming true.

Shiva crooned at him.  Squall pressed the button for the intercom that ran through the entire Garden. "All personnel just returned from Esthar are to report to the Commander's office immediately," he said calmly, and folded a hand reassuringly over Lion Heart's hilt.

The door to his office opened, but it was just his secretary, opening her mouth to say something. She thought better of it when she saw his expression and promptly backed out with a shiver.

…

When the _Ragnarok_ had approached Balamb Garden, Cloud felt like he'd been glued to the porthole. Zell had spent part of the trip explaining the purpose of SeeD and its Gardens, which had segued into the battle against Ultimecia, but somehow Zell's descriptions just didn't do justice to the reality.  The Garden was easily the most beautiful structure he'd ever seen: it was made of glass and dreams welded together with steel and technology, as bright in the sunlight as the Temple of the Ancients, as rich in color as the mako in Sephiroth and Zack's eyes. "Gods," he breathed.

The ship landed and Selphie promptly elected herself to be Cloud's tour guide. Leonhart had shared a word with her and then disappeared before the engines had fully stopped, Quistis and Irvine following soon after, but Zell decided to stick with him and Selphie and pretend he didn't have any responsibilities to worry about. Cloud trailed after them as they wandered through the vaulted halls and labyrinthine corridors, the other two chattering happily and occasionally throwing a line back at him. He wondered what it would've been like to train here and not in ShinRa, industrial oppressiveness replaced by open air and space, his hair and clothes and choice of weapon almost entirely unremarkable to mercenaries being commanded by a teenager in leather.

Selphie and Zell's conversation focused around the mostly safe topics of curricula and weaponry and how goddamn annoying it was having to fill out reports with the armory any time they so much as dreamed about it _._ When they passed the Training Room, they pointed it out with a significant glance to Ultima's wide hilt peeking over his shoulder.

"You guys have got it all wrong, man," Zell declared, fisting his hands and twisting around so that he could still talk to them while walking backwards. "Weapons are _cheating_. Anyone can swing a blade and lop off a limb, but it takes real talent to wield the body."

Selphie giggled. "I think Irvine's got both areas covered," and she laughed harder when Zell gagged dramatically. Even Cloud managed a smile.

"Well, what do we have here?" Zell cried pointedly, hurrying towards what looked, smelled, and sounded like a cafeteria. Those things were too unique to be faked. "I do believe it's hot dog day!"

"I want pickles!" shrieked Selphie, and Cloud was suddenly being dragged into a crowd of students and questionable foodstuffs.Cloud was trying to pull away from Selphie's surprisingly firm grasp when the intercom crackled.  " _All personnel just returned from Esthar are to report to the Commander's office immediately."_

Leonhart sounded as cold as usual, but Selphie and Zell both looked worried. "Something's wrong," Zell muttered, hot dogs forgotten.

Their path to the commander's office was painfully silent. They joined up with Quistis and Irvine on the way, but when Selphie asked what was going on Quistis just shook her head.  _Jenova?_

The office was unusually cold. Leonhart was standing behind his desk, facing the door with his hands at his sides, and if he'd appeared standoffish before he might as well have been a marble statue now. "Squall? What is it?" Zell asked worriedly after closing the door behind them all, but Quistis spoke first with a slightly tremulous voice.

"You've seen her too, then?"

Squall nodded once, sharply, and turned the vid-phone on his desk around so that the others could see its screen. He pressed a small red button.

" _Squall, help me…_ "

The heart-shaped face and thick dark hair faintly reminded Cloud of Tifa. _Don't think about that_.

" _Squall, it feels like there's something, something in my_ head _, I don't know, I don't think it's from Ultimecia or Adel. It feels too old and it's. It's."_

"Well?" Leonhart asked coldly.

Cloud shrugged a little under the weight of their collective attention and tried not to show that he knew what this woman was going through.  "If she's the Sorceress you were talking about, then yes, it's probably Jenova."

"Fuck," Zell swore loudly.

"Now what?" asked Quistis.

"This call came from Galbadia three hours ago. We need to bring her in immediately." _Alive or dead_ was left unspoken.

"How're we going to find her?" Irvine asked.

"I have an idea where she is," Selphie volunteered, face stony. "We've been trading letters. She's at one of the reconstruction sites.  I'd have to get the address from my quarters."

"Selphie, Irvine, I want you two to leave immediately. Find her."  The two SeeDs nodded.  "Quistis, Zell, Strife, we will still be leaving at oh-eight-hundred for Dollet if Rinoa isn't found by then. If she's left Galbadia for any reason, then she's just as likely to be near the monsters as anywhere else."  Didn't take a genius to read between the lines of all the conversation and figure out Leonhart and Rinoa had been involved at some point; Cloud thought he was handling this rather well, all things considered.  "Selphie, Irvine, you two are dismissed. The _Ragnarok_ is under regular maintenance, you'll need to take the train."

The two SeeDs saluted smartly and left.

"Strife, I want you to take a full physical with Doctor Kadowaki."

The muscles in Cloud's jaw immediately tightened, teeth gritting. "Why?"

"Because I want a full analysis of your stats. If you've been in the Lifestream for as long as you claim, then I want to know that you're in perfect form before I start trusting you with lives."

A reasonable request. Fuck that. "No."

The temperature dropped a few more degrees.  Was he the only one noticing this phenomenon? "If you won't cooperate, then you'll go by force."

"You couldn't if you tried, Leonhart."

"For Hyne's sake, what's the problem?" Zell demanded, stressed, looking between them with a pinched expression. Cloud was watching Leonhart, saw a black-gloved hand twitch towards the gunblade's hilt, and casually reached up to settle his own on Ultima's pommel. "You got an issue with doctors or something?"

"Doctor Kadowaki is as professional as they come," Quistis said confidently.

Once upon a time, so was Hojo, apparently. "The Lifestream can suspend a body indefinitely," he told Leonhart. "I'm fine."

"I won't risk this mission for an unknown."

Cloud wasn't afraid of these SeeDs, of course, had every reason to believe that they didn't stand a chance of beating his ass senseless and forcing him to a normal doctor's office. The issue was the acrid stench of bleach and stark lights over cold tables, memories as vivid as if they'd happened yesterday because the Cetra _wouldn't let him move on_.  Except this was Jenova already appearing and beginning the chaos, and really, what choice did he have? So he said, "I'll go, _if_ you listen to my orders when we catch up to Jenova. Understood?"

It was also a reasonable request, given his greater experience with the damn alien, and after a long moment Leonhart nodded sharply. Both men relaxed their holds on their respective weapons, but Cloud was already having to consciously suppress the urge to hyperventilate.

Zack tried to reassure him: maybe she'll give you a sticker.


	9. In Which Rinoa Has Gone AWOL

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The number of abrupt and numerous switches between POV is insane, and this is _after_ I combined and cut things.

Doctor Kadowaki was a small woman with a pleasant smile that made her look half her actual age. Her pride in her work was reflected in the comfortable cleanliness of the infirmary.

Squall had alerted her that he was bringing in a patient for a physical and that she had ten minutes to prepare, so with an exasperated sigh she started fixing up one of the solitary rooms. The hiss of the infirmary doors opening was followed by the familiar creak of leather and clinking of buckles, and she straightened the spectacles on her nose as she stepped out to meet Squall, Quistis, Zell, and a stranger that was presumably her short-notice patient. At least no one was bleeding out or missing a limb.

"I'm Doctor Kadowaki," she said kindly to the stranger, bowing a little. He seemed restless, eyes flickering with paranoia around the place.  Mercenaries really were the worst sort of patients. His face was pale, but that was probably just anxiety; she didn't see any feverish sweat, flushing, or stiffness.

"Cloud Strife," he said finally. Sparing a small smile for the SeeDs, she asked them to remain in the waiting room and nudged Cloud towards the single room.

"Take a seat on the bed." She didn't try lightening the mood with humor, not with the way he stood so tensely in the doorway for a few seconds before moving jerkily forwards. Kadowaki busied herself with cleaning a stethoscope so he wouldn't feel cornered under her attention. "Please remove your shirt."

Another silent pause, and then he was slipping off the heavy sword harness and leaning the huge weapon against the wall, within reach. When she finally glanced up he was sitting bare-chested on the edge of the bed, fingers curled under its edge, gaze fixed on the far wall like he was prepared for her to take an axe to his neck. His behavior, and the scars that marked up his body, were nothing she hadn't seen before in her line of work, but barring the fight with Ultimecia there hadn't been many recent occasions for fighters to see a battlefield.

Kadowaki pressed the stethoscope against his chest, said, "Breathe in," heard nothing but clear lungs and a steady, if rapid, heartbeat. Somewhat high blood pressure, but again, probably a side effect of Cloud's obvious anxiety. The glow in his eyes gave her pause, and she considered a spell gone wrong, overdrawing on magic, maybe something to do with the Guardian Forces they still didn't really understand, but when she asked he just said, "It's personal," and refused to clarify.

Taking his hand, patiently waiting for him to work through the reflex to lash out, she rotated his wrist, flexed his arm, moved on to the other. Since Cloud was nearly as thin as Squall and a few inches shorter, the strength she could feel in the muscle under her fingers was…startling. And possibly suspicious, once she turned over his forearm.

"Do you do drugs?" she asked bluntly, examining the pinpoint scars nearly invisible on his fair skin. Her eyes followed the long lines of muscle and sinew, and her brow furrowed when she realized that some of the scars on his body weren't made by weapons or hardship. Only a small, sharp blade from a steady hand could've made _those_.

"No."

She hummed thoughtfully, although to be fair the track marks did look rather old. "So where did they come from?"

"They're not self-inflicted," he muttered, maybe meaning more than just the track marks, and the rawness in his tone suggested something far more complicated than what she was suspecting.

"Cloud, I'm not trying to pry for the sake of gossip. These are things I need to know, especially if you'll be going on missions where other people are relying on you."

He inhaled sharply, but didn't say anything, and with a silent sigh Kadowaki turned to retrieve a syringe. Abruptly Cloud was getting to his feet and yanking his sleeveless top back on.

"Please sit down, I just need a blood sample and it'll only take a minute – "

"No."

"Cloud, _please_ sit down."

"I'm fine."

"It'll take me just a few seconds – "

" _No._ "

"What's going on?"

Slightly raised voices had summoned Squall to the doorway, arms crossed and expression demanding an answer right the fuck now, please. Kadowaki sighed and put the syringe away, not wanting to cause more of a scene. "It's nothing, Squall, we're fine."

But the commander was holding a staring contest with Cloud, both about as immovable as walls and stubborn as dogs. "Are you afraid of blood, Strife?"

The sudden, somewhat bitter laughter was startling. "I'm fine," Cloud said, the words worn smooth by countless repetitions. "The longer we're here, the less prepared we are to stop Jenova using up your Sorceress."

Squall twitched, but after a long pause he ground out, "Zell will take you to your quarters. Be prepared to leave by oh-eight-hundred."

…

Hyne, but Selphie could swear that the train ride to Galbadia was taking longer than usual. She'd been spoiled with the sleek beauty and power of _Ragnarok_ under her hands, and now she had nothing to distract her from thoughts of a messy, terrified Rinoa. Beside her Irvine had his feet propped up on an empty seat across the aisle, Exeter leaning against his shoulder, and the sight of the rifle made Selphie's stomach twist. She hoped, desperately, it would be unnecessary, even if in all likelihood Rinoa had only gotten worse in the last few hours.  See, Selphie liked Rinoa. More relaxed than Quistis, quicker to laugh, and another girl with whom Selphie could act like the teenager she technically was. The problem was the difference between mercenaries and civilians, and she privately suspected that kind of divide was a big part of Rinoa and Squall breaking apart. She glanced at Irvine and figured she knew what it was like to do that whole caring-for-someone-you-can't-have thing.

"So," she started, swiping Irvine's hat and slouching down to mimic his pose, "whaddya think of Cloud?"

He just shrugged and settled lower in the seat. "I don't trust him."

"You sound like Squally."

"Think about it, darlin'. He comes out of nowhere predicting the return of what's basically a Sorceress, for all intents and purposes, and now this thing with Rinoa? Mighty suspicious timing."

"You think Cloud was right? About Knights?"

"I don't know," he sighed, tipping his head back on the seat.

"If he is and Squall ends up getting screwed, I'm gonna be _pissed_ ," she muttered, folding her arms over her chest and scowling. Irvine smiled without opening his eyes. "Like, we bust our asses going after Ultimecia, and we get just enough peacetime for us to start getting comfortable before it all blows up in our faces."

Eyes still closed, Irvine unerringly reached out and ruffled her hair. "At least you'll be going down with the rest of us, right?"

She poked him in the side and finger-combed her hair straight again when he twitched away. "Damn straight."

...

It was rather sobering to see the amount of rebuilding and the remaining pockets of destruction in the city, but the people were helpful enough, and before too long Irvine and Selphie were standing in front of a hastily constructed apartment complex. Irvine took the chance to swipe back his hat as he whistled softly.  "Huh. Looks like the princess went down in the world a bit – _ow!"_

Selphie tucked Strange Vision back into her belt and skipped up to the front door. Irvine followed more sedately, absently tapping Exeter against his shoulder and half-smiling as Selphie nearly tripped over her own feet. Coming back to Galbadia, he thought, would've been a lot harder without Selphie here; he might've hated Martine, might've spent a little too much time being entertained out in the city than actually training, but it was the place in which he'd grown up and it was in his blood. He hoped that his weapon wouldn't be the one that would have to take Rinoa out, not after all she'd been doing for this place.

He followed Selphie up the bare wooden stairs inside towards the upper stories. She was counting off door numbers in as many languages as she could, as quickly as she could, because she couldn't just do it like a normal person, before declaring, "This one!"

"Don't forget to knock, darling."

The sound of her fist against the door echoed in the bare hallway, highlighting just how empty the building seemed. They shared a glance before she called out hesitantly, "Rinoa, you in there? It's Selphie. Can I come in?"

When the silence stretched, Irvine quietly flicked off Exeter's safety. Selphie knocked again. "Rinoa?"

"Let's go," Irvine murmured, and Selphie grabbed hold of her nunchuks and pushed at the door. It swung open without protest, which was, yeah, strange, and then Selphie said, "Holy shit."

When she turned on the light, Irvine saw that what must've originally been a cozy little apartment turned into the aftermath of a small hurricane. Every glass or porcelain object, including the window, was shattered and lying in razor-sharp pieces on nearly every flat surface, and it took a moment for Irvine to realize that the crunching under his boots was slowly melting ice.

"Well, shit," Selphie muttered.

Irvine huffed with tense laughter as he covered the rest of the apartment, a small bedroom and a tiny bathroom. He shook his head. "She's not here."

"Who're you?"

Both SeeDs whirled around, weapons raised, and the blonde girl in the doorway squeaked with terror.

"Sorry, sorry!" Selphie cried, hurriedly ducking her nunchuks behind her back with a forcibly wide grin. "You kinda surprised us. We're SeeDs. We're, uh, friends of Rinoa's."

"SeeDs?" the girl repeated blankly, eyes fixed on Exeter.

Irvine quickly lowered the barrel and automatically relaxed into a lazy slouch, flicking the wide brim of his hat. The girl blushed. "We're looking for Rinoa, sweetheart, you seen her?"

"Uh, y-yeah, I've seen her, we've had lunch together a few times."

"Well, ain't that a coincidence." Irvine smiled like every cowboy and buccaneer who'd ever charmed the petticoats off a pretty lady. "You know where she is now? We're thinking she might be in some trouble, but we can't help her 'til we find her."

"Um, I don't know. She stopped showing up to work a couple days ago. She wasn't looking very well, but she kept saying everything was fine."

"Any idea where she might've gone?" Selphie picked up. "Maybe she mentioned another friend?"

The girl shook her head, a little wildly. Selphie leaned towards Irvine and said from the side of her mouth, "I'll let you be the one to tell Squall we couldn't find her."

…

The Garden's guest quarters had been built near the entrance, owing to the greater security and closeness of the conference rooms. They were larger than the typical two-person cadet dorms, came complete with their own kitchenette and full bathroom, but were also about as practical and simple as one might expect from a mercenary facility.

Hours after Zell had showed him to his new accommodations, Cloud was still sitting at the dining table and staring out the small, slightly open window that overlooked one of the Garden's courtyards. He hadn't noticed the sun setting, the gloom slowly settling over the room. Not even a full day had passed since he'd met the SeeDs and it already felt like years, and he...he probably shouldn't be alone. Not with the way the quiet was starting to press in on his skull, except the only person he really wanted to see was dead from a minor case of firing squad.

Sometimes you gotta laugh so you don't go insane, Zack said, but Cloud didn't think that was very helpful advice when thinking about being flat on your back while someone else drew pictures in your flesh with a scalpel. He didn't hear the door hissing open behind him.

_("Specimen C is responding beautifully. The childhood influence of mako on his immune system is working in our favor.")_

Ultima was suddenly in his hand and whistling through the air before Cloud's brain caught up, the blade's edge a breadth from Leonhart's throat. He blinked. _Pay attention_ , Zack always used to say.  Leonhart waited for Cloud to lower the sword and prop it back up against a chair before bracing a hip on the table's edge. Cloud went back to staring out the window, thinking that it smelled like it was going to rain soon.

Leonhart stared at him.

Brick walls, said Zack.

"Selphie told me about Seifer," Cloud said, and Leonhart shifted a little. "She said you two were friends." Is that what kids were calling it these days.

"We were rivals," Leonhart replied in the kind of tone that suggested he ate ice cubes and frozen steaks each night. Cloud glanced sideways at the scar running over Leonhart's nose and thought about the Masamune, sliding so smoothly through his heart while cracking ribs, and wondered, _Is there a difference?_ "What does it matter?" Leonhart asked.

Cloud's immediate response was to say that it didn't, but that'd be a lie. "Depends on you," he said instead. "Whether it's Rinoa that cracks or Seifer, or hell, both, they might come after you specifically." He paused. "Or vice versa, if you're the one that goes."

He still wasn't sure if Sephiroth's fascination with him had been because of Cloud himself, or because of the bits of _Zack_ in him, and he wasn't sure which was worse. Judging from the tense way Leonhart was holding himself at the edge of Cloud's vision, Cloud's words weren't hitting far from the mark.

"You said Jenova had a Knight before. What was his relationship to you?"

In all likelihood Leonhart hadn't meant that the way it _sounded_ , except Cloud was already thinking about hot skin between the sheets, few spoken words, only ever in the dark. _I'm worried_ , Zack's expression always said in the mornings where Cloud winced if he moved without thinking.  Figuring he should throw Leonhart a bone, he just said, "Sephiroth was my commanding officer."

"And that's why you were there the last time Jenova appeared?"

Sure, why not, as good a reason as any and better than most. "I killed her." Cloud's eyes slid over to Leonhart without his head turning. "Which is why you all need to listen to my orders when we find her, even with all those ice magic shows you've been putting on."

"I'm Junctioned to Shiva," Leonhart said, as though that explained everything. Cloud had no idea what that meant, but whatever. "Did you also kill Sephiroth?"

Cloud

_("Thank you, Cloud," Sephiroth breathed, Ultima sliding so smoothly through his heart while cracking ribs, so much blood running down the blade and over Cloud's hands, streaking pale naked flesh, "thank you.")_

said calmly, "Yes."

…

Squall had developed this habit, in times of crisis or other people's stupidity, of just putting his head down and bulling through it as efficiently and effectively as he could. But now Strife was implying a correlation between past relationships and future obsessions from crazy people, and if Rinoa and Seifer were both going to be involved in this mess – well.

_("This doesn't make us BFFs, Puberty Boy.")_

_("Whatever.")_

This might get awkward.


	10. In Which Jenova Makes the Opening Move

Considering the circumstances, Vincent supposed it could've been a lot worse. At least the hallucinations hadn't affected Seifer's talent for being a jackass.

"You mother _fucking_ dickwad, keep those _fucking_ tentacles to yourself – "

Then again, there had been an entirely unexpected wave of monsters only a day after the first wave. Vincent was scolding himself for thinking that they had more time before the monsters that he'd followed from the north would hit the town, but he'd underestimated them, so now he was crouched on the roof of a cottage while Seifer took out his frustration at the world in the street below. Seifer would've done Cid proud.

Raijin and Fujin never strayed far from Seifer's blind spots as they cut their way through flailing limbs and mutated bodies. Just a few hours before, the Dollet residents had been dragging dead monster bits to a large bonfire outside the city, had already been worn down with exhaustion when the first of the Jenova spawn's unnatural screams had drifted through the air. Vincent just thought, _Of course the beasts would show up when we're at our weakest_. The day had begun with a red dawn, not to mention an awkward breakfast of cold cereal and dark glares from Seifer, and he'd remembered Cid's old superstitions. _Red sky at morn, sailors be warned_.

Claw streaked with filth and gods knew what kind of bodily fluids, human hand bracing Death Penalty as he sniped into the horde from the low roof of a guest cottage, the cries of the townspeople rolled over him in a blanket of déjà vu: Meteor, the twisting of metal as buildings came down on the heads of Midgar's citizens, screams and moans, cries abruptly cut short. A number of Dollet's people were former military, he could tell, but not all, and Vincent pulled off a flying leap that would've made the Gold Saucer's acrobats jealous to smash his clawed hand through the skull of a monster determined to eat a screaming little kid. The monster thrashed as it died and the kid scrambled away, hopefully somewhere with less death. Vincent ducked down behind a low garden wall, absently shaking the gore from his claw as he looked around the chaos for his three hosts.

"Where the _fuck_ are they coming from?"

"Can't they tell they're totally outclassed, yanno?"

"DIE."

There they were. Shoving a fresh clip into Death Penalty, Vincent slid like a shadow over the wall and came up behind Seifer, putting a bullet through something's eye just before the gunblade sliced its head off. He'd been keeping part of his attention on Seifer, watching for any sign of aspirations to godhood or genocide.

"Yo, vampire," Seifer was shouting, "I'm not kidding, where the fuck did these things come from?"

"The north," Vincent said shortly. A flailing tentacle forced him back towards the wall, and a moment later Seifer dropped down beside him with his chest heaving and face drawn. _He shouldn't be fighting so strenuously_ , Vincent observed, but he just checked Death Penalty's ammunition while Seifer panted heavily.

"Thanks, that explains everything," Seifer snarked, and if Vincent had been any less of a strictly self-controlled and classy person he might have rolled his eyes. When Seifer opened his mouth to demonstrate another dazzling moment of wit but nothing came out, Vincent looked at him sideways and narrowed his eyes when saw the gobsmacked expression smeared across Seifer's face. A second later Seifer blinked several times and muttered something that was probably meant to be reassuring but was actually vaguely insulting, but at least he was still holding his gunblade firmly and his gaze was otherwise steady.

"Later," Vincent said shortly, "we're not done here yet."

…

"I _knew_ I should've brought my booms. Then we wouldn't be having this problem."

"Your 'booms'?"

"A bit of nitro, some gunpowder, and _boom."_ Selphie clapped her hands to emphasize her point and some of the people in the line for train tickets jumped. Irvine grinned.

"Somehow, love, I don't see your booms being well appreciated here."

"You just don't have any imagination."

Irvine raised a brow. "Funny, that's not what I've been told," he said. He earned a solid punch that made his arm go numb and an eloquent, " _Ew!"_

They shuffled forward a few steps in as many minutes.  After some time unabashedly eavesdropping on the people around them Selphie was starting to bounce on the balls of her feet again. She tried craning over the crowd to see the train.

"I can lift you up if you want," Irvine volunteered. His magnanimous gesture had nothing to do with her short yellow dress, no sir.

"Down, boy," she snorted, still balancing on the tips of her toes. "You'd have more luck with Squally."

That was not a mental image Irvine was prepared for. "I think I'm happy being the lone stud in the pasture, darlin'," he said dryly, but Selphie was suddenly just looking thoughtful.

"I wonder, was Rinoa, like, his _first?"_

"How should I know? I never went to Balamb." He wouldn't have been around to hear all the gossip that was wielded like weaponry among the student body, and it was just weird to think about it, like putting 'sex' and 'parents' in the same sentence.

"I don't remember seeing him with anyone, but maybe it was before I transferred from Trabia," Selphie mused aloud, and Irvine mentally groaned, resigning himself to an hour of a bored Selphie entertaining herself with an examination of Squall's hitherto unknown, and irrelevant, sex life. "Well, he and Seifer were always at each other's throats, but I never really saw him with a girl."

"Maybe he likes a bit of variety," said Irvine, and Selphie scrunched up her nose.

"What, you mean like him and Seifer? No way.  They'd be more likely to punch each other."

"Maybe he's asexual." And if that were the case, then maybe Selphie would drop the subject.

Blowing a raspberry at him, she said more seriously, "He never did actually tell us why Rinoa left, though. You think it had anything to do with her being, y'know, a Sorceress?"

"I don't know," he said quietly, not wanting to be overheard. "If either of them knew something was wrong with her, though, then she wouldn't have actually left the Garden. Better she be around SeeDs who can handle themselves than civilians."

"Yeah, true," Selphie muttered. "Damn it."

The curl in her hair was drooping along with her mood. A little embarrassed to admit it, Irvine said, "I'm…worried. Too, I mean," but the awkwardness was worth the arm that Selphie slid under his coat and around his waist.

To prevent the moment from becoming too saccharine, screams suddenly erupted from the crowds nearest the trains, accompanied by the screech of tearing, grinding metal. Immediately Selphie and Irvine were running forward, Exeter and Strange Vision in hand. Irvine swore passionately under his breath when he nearly tripped over a man dashing towards the exits in the stream of panicked civilians.

There was another wave of screams followed by the unmistakable sound of meat hitting the ground. By the time they got to the tracks, several half-occupied train cars had been twisted into an unrecognizable mess of steel and splintered wood, broken bodies scattered through the wreckage. Irvine spun around, looking for an explanation as to what the hell had just happened, so sudden and so devastating.

_**Where is he?** _

It was Rinoa's voice, if it had been surgically replaced with a broken violin. There was a quality to it that had the potential to be heartbreakingly beautiful but instead grated like a fork scraping a plate, reverberating in their chests, their heads. Irvine wasn't sure if he was hearing it with his ears or his mind and he gritted his teeth, ignoring the way his eyes started watering.  _**Where is he?** _

_Who?_ Irvine wondered wildly as Selphie yelled, "Jenova, right? Come out and try again, I wanna know if you have tentacles."

Of _course_ it was Jenova, and oh, shit, he just knew that there was going to be a world of hurt in his near future. But when Jenova appeared, it wasn't the flailing eldritch horror he'd been expecting from Strife's description but plain, human Rinoa, still in her work clothes as she picked her way over the wreckage with all the imperial grace of a princess. There was a snide joke in there somewhere, Irvine just knew it, except most princesses weren't possessed by aliens and didn't look at loved ones like they were something to be crushed under her dusty boots. His glove creaked as he tightened his grip on Exeter.

_**You believe you can kill a god?** _

Not really, Irvine thought, but there were worse ways to die than going out in a blaze of heroically futile glory. The retorts of Exeter's bullets and Selphie's summoning of Carbuncle were nearly drowned out by the continued panic in the rest of the train station, which was abruptly snapped as a wave of compressed power swept aside the bullets and through the rest of the station. The people that hadn't yet managed to escape dropped dead to the ground in ringing silence.

"Oh fuck," Irvine moaned softly as Carbuncle hurriedly cast Shell on them and ran squealing back to the ether.

The next few minutes of his life were a blur of sound and magic and the warmth of Exeter's barrel beneath his fingers, Selphie yelling and fierce at his side. Jenova's magic pummeled at their swiftly waning protection until Irvine's Shell shattered like sugar glass and an icicle grazed his side, so cold it seared, and Selphie suddenly went down with a sharp cry and too much blood spattering the station floor to be healthy. Irvine immediately dropped to his knees at her side, and through the haze of pain Irvine could've sworn he saw tears on Rinoa's face.

…

" _I – "_

_Cloud's voice choked on a moan when Sephiroth pulled him upright from the bed, Cloud's legs falling open over Sephiroth's thighs as he settled in Sephiroth's lap. There was a hand spread between his shoulder blades and another gripping one of his hips so tightly it was going to be painful wearing his stiff uniform belt tomorrow, and he had to scramble for balance by wrapping his arms around Sephiroth's shoulders. His fingers twined themselves through long hair as Sephiroth – as he –_

"Cloud."

" _Do you love me, Cloud?"_

" _I – "_

"Oi, Cloud!"

 _Nibelheim's winters were always so cold_.

He jerked awake and nearly fell off the chair in which he'd apparently managed to fall asleep, head pillowed on his forearms. He discretely tried to wipe away the wetness on his cheek before realizing it wasn't drool at all but a couple tears. Oh boy, said Zack as Cloud took a moment to remember he wasn't in the Nibelheim inn but one of the guest quarters in Balamb Garden, that it was a pleasant early-morning breeze coming in through a partially open window and not a freezing one.  Leonhart had left hours ago, leaving Cloud alone with the ghosts.

"Cloud, are you still alive in there or do I need the doc to call a time of death?"

Back popping as he straightened, he automatically checked that Ultima was propped within reach against the nearest wall and opened the door, taking a step back as Zell, ear pressed to said door, toppled inside.

"Hi," grinned Zell from the floor. "Squall wanted to make sure everyone's ready to leave in like fifteen minutes. He hasn't heard from Irvine or Selphie yet, but I mean, we're just as likely to find Rinoa in a city full of Jenova-monsters before it's too late, right?"

"It's always too late," Cloud muttered under his breath as he let the door hiss close again, and Zack said, Dear gods, kiddo, you sound like one of those people who believe that the end of the world is just days away.

(Zell heard the mutter as he got back to his feet and thought back to earlier that morning, when Squall had strode into the commander's office where he and Quistis were waiting. When Quistis asked, _So what did you find out_ , Squall had given them a long thoughtful look and replied, _We can trust him_. Which had nearly floored Zell, who'd been pretty convinced that Squall and Cloud acted like two porcupines forced into close quarters with one another.)

"Rough night?" Zell asked lightly.

"You could say that," Cloud said neutrally, and relaxed a little when Zell went on, "I think we'll just go straight to the _Ragnarok_ , the mechanics have finished all their doo-hickey things."

Swinging Ultima into place on his back, Cloud followed Zell into the hallway. That an experienced mercenary was willing to ever-so-casually turn his back towards Cloud didn't go unnoticed or, on some level, unappreciated. "Does it take that long for maintenance?"

"Well, _Ragnarok's_ pretty damn expensive, you know? She's the fastest ship we've got."

Quistis was already waiting for them in the hangar, sitting on the entrance ramp with her legs crossed and a stack of what looked like the Estharian reports on her lap. "I thought we'd look these over again on the way," she said as Cloud and Zell approached. She looked up, paused, and tilted her head slightly. "If you took a black marker to your face and slicked your hair back a little," she told Cloud, "you two might be able to pass as twins."

Zell scowled at the insult to his very manly tattoos and stomped into the airship.

"Leonhart?" Cloud asked.

"He'll be here in a few minutes." Her smile faded. "He's been up all night waiting for Selphie and Irvine to call in, but there still hasn't been a single word. It's possible they just got held up somewhere."

No one was taking bets on that. She shrugged helplessly and Cloud wished he knew what to say to reassure her. 'They're not important enough to her, Jenova probably would've killed them quickly'?

Zell was at the _Ragnarok'_ s controls and was explaining to a disinterested and increasingly nauseated Cloud the basics of piloting when Leonhart finally arrived precisely one minute after eight o'clock. He was visibly tenser than usual, which made Zack wonder how the guy didn't snap his own spine in half.

"Any word?" Quistis asked immediately, and Leonhart said, "No. I've given Xu clearance to all secure channels and she'll contact us if Selphie or Irvine report in. Zell, take us to Dollet."

"Aye-aye, Captain," Zell saluted without enthusiasm. There was a moment in which the airship lurched and took Cloud's stomach with it.

"Strife," Leonhart said sharply, motioning for Cloud to follow him towards a window away from the other two. Cloud did so silently, bracing himself against the wall and crossing his arms with a level stare while Leonhart gripped the metal windowsill and leaned forward, head hanging between his shoulders.

"Strife," he said again, then more quietly, "Cloud. There's no hope, is there?"

His lips were set in a hard line, expression bordering on haggard. This is what happens when we send children to war, Sephiroth murmured, and Zack said, This is what they did to us, too.

"You know I had to kill Sephiroth," Cloud said, just as quietly. Leonhart – well, let's be fair, Cloud supposed wryly, it was 'Squall' now – looked at him from the corner of his eyes.

"He was important to you." _As something more than just a commanding officer_ , Squall didn't say.

"Yes."

Squall's soft laugh was brief and hurting.  "How did you keep going?"

"What's more important: pride, or survival?"  Cloud chewed briefly on his lip.  "I had to learn how to trust the others, but I also...I also had to admit some things to myself that I never wanted to."  His voice lowered further.  "I don't know that I actually managed to keep going, in the end."

Squall rested his forehead against the glass and closed his eyes.  "If it comes down to it, you'll take care of it."

"Yeah.  Yeah, I will."


	11. In Which There Is CHAOS, Pun Intended

Early in the morning long before dawn, while Cloud stared sleeplessly up at an unfamiliar ceiling, there was a lull in the battle as the monsters finally backed off enough to allow the humans a chance to lick their wounds. Raijin was clasping a hand to the bloodied gash on his other arm as Seifer scowled and kicked at a monster carcass. Fujin and Vincent were looking over their weapons, the former cleaning the gore from her chakram and the latter cleaning his gun barrel, and when he'd sufficiently drawn out the silence Vincent stowed Death Penalty in the subspace under his cloak and looked out over the battlefield.

"This town's gonna be a genocide if those fucking monsters – " Seifer kicked the corpse again viciously, " – don't give up and run away."

"NOW?"

"Why don't we ask the vampire?" The pounding in Seifer's head was slowly getting worse, exacerbated by so much exertion and the inability to use magic without feeling like his soul was being torn in half.  Or like an addict, the magic an intoxicating high.  Either one.

"The monsters won't give up until they're all dead," said Vincent, like the cheerful guy he was. "The only instinct they have now is to kill. Only someone with Jenova in his or her body can control them."

Seifer eyed him. "And if you're a horror sideshow?"

Fujin kicked him in the shin.

"Shouldn't we have, like, a plan or something, yanno?" Raijin asked tentatively, automatically looking to Seifer, who crossed his arms, leaned against a bent iron fence, and raised a brow at Vincent to cover up the fact that the fence was only thing holding him upright at the moment. He blinked and _he saw Valentine again, short hair and suit, lying on a laboratory floor with a bullet in his heart –_

He was distantly thankful for his leather gloves when he nearly fell flat on his face and had to grab the fence to catch himself. A heavy hand clamped onto his shoulder and Raijin asked worriedly, "Seifer, you okay?"

"'M fine," he muttered distractedly, absently pressing the fingers of his other hand against his forehead.

"Excuse me, sirs and ma'am," came a stranger's shaky voice, "th-the mayor's declared this city under siege. We've sent messages to the Gardens for help, but until the SeeDs get here…what should we do?"

The speaker was a young fisherman carrying a bloodied spear, its wooden shaft well-worn and aged. Behind him were others with varying types of homemade weapons, but only a few wore the uniforms of soldiers. Seifer huffed a laugh. Shrugging off Raijin's hand, he glanced at his posse and found them all staring at _him_ , and it took an embarrassingly long moment for him to realize that they were waiting for the guy who'd tried ambushing a president during a live broadcast surrounded by soldiers to come up with a damn plan. Once upon a time this dashing knight would indeed have taken up his sword and led his men to battle, except he'd tried that, hadn't he? And he hadn't been very successful, unless one considered 'mass mayhem, near genocide, and chronic insanity' as something to be listed on a person's job history. Hell, he was more likely to get these men and women _killed_ , he was still too much of that needy little boy with big dreams and no one that loved him.

But then Seifer happened to glance at Fujin and Raijin and the two were watching him patiently, as though he'd never abandoned or used them, and he thought of Leonhart, who had never believed in judging on good or evil, only perspectives.

"Every person who knows a thing or two about killing shit, grab something pointy and prepare to haul ass," he said loudly. "If you can't, get all medical and food supplies plus all the kids to the safest area in this place. We'll also need a squad out here to start collecting the dead, Hyne knows how long these fuckers'll keep coming, and if we don't get a start on burning this shit then the monsters won't matter because we'll be dying of plague." Hey, he never claimed to be any sort of keynote speaker. "Raijin, help these bastards with the supplies, you know the most about that kind of shit. Fu, make sure they burn those bodies at the edge of town, we don't need that ash getting everywhere."

The two grinned and shot him smart salutes before setting off into the crowd and bullying the people into teams. Pretending he wasn't getting the start of warm fuzzies on the inside, Seifer turned to Vincent with a smirk and gestured at the variety of kitchen and fishing tools.

"And you and I, my dear vampire, are going to see just how bad this whole thing really is."

…

One of the Dollet citizens was a young, unmarried man named Josephine Wiseley (but call him Joe, please, he _hated_ his name, which had come from his long-dead grandmother and his mother's burning wish to have a little girl) and the last few days of his life had been nothing less than nightmarish. Last surviving family slaughtered by monsters, clothes stained with a variety of bodily fluids, and his paintings long ripped to shreds, he stood in a sort of numbed shock with a crowd that had settled in Dollet's main square near the fountain where Reno usually ran about. Joe distantly prayed that the poor dog had gotten away in time.

"Any of you poor bastards got any experience?" asked the big blond guy in the trenchcoat, gunblade resting on a shoulder. He was tall and lean and scarred and looked suspiciously like a certain Sorceress' Knight.

There was a susurrus of mixed 'yes' and 'no' from the crowd. Joe had always considered himself a lover, not a fighter, that the pen was mightier than the sword and all that jazz, but he was starting to regret it even more than his unfortunate name.

"Well, fuck," said the guy with cheerful cynicism. "All right then, folks, here's what we're gonna do. I'm Seifer Almasy – yeah, _that_ guy, but I'm also the guy that's going to give you your best chance of survival, so you can suck it up and challenge me to a duel after all this is over. Me and Valentine here are going to try our best to make sure that at least you know which end of your weapon should be pointed at the monsters."

"Do any of you _not_ have a reason to fight?" said Valentine in this dark, ominous kind of voice that made Joe shudder a little. No one said anything, but hands tightened with grim determination around makeshift weapons, and that seemed to be enough. When Almasy started barking out orders like a boss and Vincent moved through the crowd with calm efficiency, Joe began to hope that maybe it wasn't all as hopeless as it seemed.

…

"It's fucking hopeless."

Vincent looked over at Seifer, who was watching the first grey beginnings of dawn spread over the town as they sat on the edge of a roof. The night had passed without incident, except maybe when someone dropped a spear on his foot, and Seifer and Vincent had finally sent the civilians to go rest while they could. Having spent a good portion of the previous evening and that night putting the civilians through their paces with the help of more experienced soldiers, Vincent had silently come to the same conclusion.

But at least the self-inflicted, accidental damage had been kept to a minimum, even with Seifer's impatience and Vincent's mild tendency towards perfectionism. The majority of the monster carcasses had been dragged just outside the town's limits and set on fire both for sanitation and a deterrent to whatever was still alive and tentacled, although judging from the looks Fujin was sending Seifer, Vincent had a feeling he was going to find something squishy and possibly toxic in his boots at some point. Rough blockades of sandbags, concrete, and miscellaneous materials had been set up across as many roads and alleyways as they could manage.

Vincent had caught himself unconsciously picking out those people more dangerous than the others, ones that had a Turk's understated ruthlessness or a SOLDIER's innovative strength. A possible strategy had occurred to him and, in the back of his mind, CHAOS smiled toothily.  "There was something said about gardens and seeds," said Vincent quietly. "What are they to these people?"

"Seriously?" said Seifer incredulously. "What crypt have _you_ been living in?"

Vincent didn't say anything. He certainly didn't feel a pang of nostalgia or homesickness or something for sleepless nights on the _Highwind_ playing cards and being passive-aggressive about Cid's abominable taste in brandy.

"You know what Sorceresses are, right?"

"No." If there was a note of sardonic amusement in his voice at Seifer's bewilderment, it was entirely justified.

"People with way too much power." He paused. " _No one_ should have that much power. Gardens are the places where poor assholes are trained to be SeeDs to fight back."

"Your hallucinations are connected to these Sorceresses." It wasn't really a question, and Seifer gave him a twisted smirk and said, "Yeah, I was a Knight, right-hand man to the big bad. Take my advice, Valentine – a chick offers to take you beyond the point of no return, she ain't talking about a blowjob."

 _This_ story wasn't sounding to start sound familiar, was it? At least it explained why Seifer was receiving messages from people who were nominally dead, why the rhythms of the Planet had woken Vincent in the first place.

"Almasy, Valentine!" a voice cried from the street below, and Seifer leaned over the edge of the roof all suave as though he were totally in control. It was a youth named Joe, who threw a sloppy salute and yelled, "Someone saw some movement outside the city!"

"Time to play," Seifer shouted back, leaping off the roof. His boots thudded solidly on the cobblestone.

"But what about the SeeDs?" the boy demanded frantically. "They haven't arrived yet – "

"Except a monster took out the receiver, dumbass, so we don't know if they even got the message. If they did, it's gonna take time to be approved, _if_ it's approved, and by the time the SeeDs get off their asses you'll already be something's chew toy. So _move your ass_."

The kid scuttled off as Vincent landed lightly next to Seifer.  "Moron," Seifer muttered, hefting Hyperion. CHAOS stirred again, restless.

And so, as it began all over again, one of the questions that were probably plaguing people's minds was, _Where the hell were all these monsters_ coming _from?_

Good question, too. They came in droves of wriggling limbs and dripping fangs and contorted bodies like something out of those B-grade horror movies Yuffie had loved so much, but it was the sheer scale of them that was the most mind-boggling. If the first two days of Dollet being under siege (again) was bad, the third was practically a slaughter.

"Where are they _coming_ from?" Seifer demanded, yelling over the roar of weird howls and screams as his bullets splattered brain matter in a rather artistic manner over the pavement.

"JENOVA," Fujin yelled back, her chakram spinning out long spirals of blood. Vincent's claw was beginning to stiffen with all the gore choking up the jointed plates and Death Penalty's bullets, nicked from an unsuspecting trapper on the coast outside the city, weren't exactly in endless supply. He retreated to the top of a building to snipe at what he could, as quickly and efficiently as he could, to save who he could.

_("Every life is precious," Lucrecia said quietly as she fiddled with some flasks, her back to Vincent so she didn't have to see his expression of horror and disbelief._

_("Then why – how_ could _you – "_

_("Please understand, Vincent, the Ancients' power could be what saves the Planet. Sometimes the needs of the many outweigh the needs of a few.")_

Vincent very much disliked that saying, if 'dislike' meant the sensation of drowning while a mob held him under. _("What you're doing to an unborn_ child - ") But down the sight of Death Penalty's barrel there were people and monsters dying, makeshift weapons and hurriedly-built barricades not quite enough to stem the tide, and as much as he preferred the role of the Uncaring Stoic Gunman even Vincent had a line drawn in the sand. He stripped out of clothes that weren't his and folded them neatly, setting them aside near a ventilation pipe with Death Penalty lying neatly on top. He felt wrung out, used, and very, very old as he closed his eyes, turned inward to CHAOS, and said _yes_.

Skin and muscle shredded and great dark wings exploded from his back, oily blackness spreading over his body like a disease. Fingernails turned to talons that scraped and cracked the roof tiles as Vincent curled over himself in shivering pain.

…

"We'll be there in a few minutes," Zell called back from the cockpit, and continued in a suddenly panicked voice, "Holy shit, Squall, Quisty, look!"

Squall, Quistis, and Cloud immediately pressed their faces against the windows, squinting against the reflection of morning sunlight glittering over the ocean. It took a long moment to realize what they seeing.

"Holy shit," Quistis echoed faintly. Squall's hand tightened around Lion Heart's hilt. "We'd know if there was another Lunatic Pandora incident, right?"

"Here we go again," Cloud sighed.

"Welcome to Dollet," Zell muttered dryly.

Quistis pointed at a creature larger than the others, black with scarlet wings and enormous horns and a roar that shook the _Ragnarok_ even as high in the air as they were. It wreaked havoc among the monsters like a kid kicking over all his toy dinosaurs, only bloodier and with more death.

"Maybe someone switched Dollet and Hell when we weren't looking." Zell looked a little green.

Squall was instead watching Cloud, the way his unnaturally vivid eyes narrowed, then widened.  "What is it?"

"CHAOS," said Cloud with a slightly unhinged smile that made Squall wonder, not for the first time,just how many cards were missing from this guy's Triple Triad deck.


	12. In Which There's a Resurrection but No Theme Music

"...Chaos?" Quistis echoed.

But Cloud was already jumping to his feet, digging into his pockets and barking, "Zell, take her down, flank the monsters opposite the giant black flying thing.  Be prepared, these monsters are probably only susceptible to mastered materia and stronger physical attacks."

"Materia?" Squall echoed.

Cloud wondered what the hell was wrong with everyone.  "Magic."

"I've got Quetzalcoatl," Zell volunteered, and, yay, something familiar.  The airship bucked harshly and Zell swore up a blue streak.

"Ifrit," Quistis announced, running a hand over Save-the-Queen's chain, swaying easily with the rocking ship.  "Squall already has Shiva."

Cloud found the materia in his pockets, muttered, "Thank you, Aeris," and snapped them into the slots of his heavy bangle.  Then he drew Ultima and did the same with the slots in its hilt.  Leonhart was watching him closely instead of checking his own weapon.  How unprofessional.

The airship's decreasing altitude made Cloud's ears pop.  The moment it wouldn't depressurize the cabin and kill everyone inside, Zell opened the hatch, and Cloud braced a hand on its edge and cast a challenging smirk at Squall.  "Let's mosey."

He took that last step into freefall with Ultima in hand and the wind screaming in his ears, stealing his breath as he fell.  He instinctively twisted himself upright and used the body of some flying monstrosity, slicing it in half, to slow his momentum and land with dramatic flair on the pavement.  He took half a second to grab a big breath and then jumped right into his terrifying, gravity-defying dance of death that left long scars and bloody monster bits in cracked pavement.

_**brother -** _

A sort of haze settled over him, thoughts shutting down until his world was just the screams of mutated beasts, the mako rushing thickly in his veins, and the play of Ultima that, most of the time, was more familiar to him than his own name.

_**failure -** _

The tide of monsters began to turn, pressing harder against him, and Cloud could feel a bone-deep pull that whispered _reunionreunionreunion_.  The death of every beast was one more voice silenced in Jenova's choir, and it was really fucking satisfying.

_"Diamond Dust!"_

A blast of freezing wind tore into the wall of monsters, ripping flesh and tentacle, and Cloud was startled out of his battle-haze.  _Shiva?_ Relief in the knowledge that the mercenary kids had powerful magic was unexpected, but then, they did remind him a little uncomfortably of AVALANCHE.  A swift turn on his heel and Ultima sliced a throat so deeply the head nearly rolled off.  The beast thrashed as it died and Cloud whirled around to the next one, and only the wet rattle of a gasping roar gave Cloud any warning to duck.  The six-inch claw missed his spine, but it still gouged deeply into Cloud's side, flaying through muscle right down to rib bones, and he used the adrenaline provided by the bloom of agony to power a Fire3 and send up the nearby monsters into an awesome inferno that would've made Zack shed a tear of pride.

...

Seifer was having a dilemma of his own.

_("Kome, my Knight, let us rule this world as - ")_

As what?  What did she mean -

 _("Only_ I _care for you.  Only_ I _gave you power when they would have kontained you, broken you.")_

 _Seifer looked over her armies - no,_ his _armies now.  They were his_ (monsters) _men, and he was their_ (enemy) _general; he lifted Hyperion and_ parried a monster's tentacle, gritting his teeth and snarling when he felt the familiar burn of a Bolt spell.  Fortunately it was a relatively weak one, since he couldn't take the time to raise a barrier; resisting the siren-call of magic and the high it brought was a fucking  _bitch_ that deserved a damn medal.

When he heard _Ragnarok's_ familiar roar he nearly, almost, missed avoiding a lethal claw on purpose.  "Well, fuck me," he growled to himself, not entirely sure if he was glad or pissed that the communications tower had actually worked. _("This doesn't make us friends, Leonhart.")_

"Why can't you just die?" 

And at this point he honestly wasn't sure if he was talking to the monsters or himself.

A big black beast with scarlet wings and a fanged smile as big as the fucking clock tower dove bodily into the horde, sweeping back up into the air covered in blood.  Seifer figured he should be concerned, but he was too angry and too scared and too goddamn _tired_ to give a shit anymore.

...

_her monsterchildren were dying and their deaths were tiny pinpricks of agony on her human flesh_

_**no** _

_**my son** _

_it hurts i will kill those who betray me  
_

_**squall** _

_**my son come to me** _

_no not him not this stop it  
_

**_sephiroth_ **

**_mother needs_ _you_ **

...

Irvine's first thought when he woke up was that he'd gone on one hell of a bender.  He hadn't done that since his promotion to SeeD, but it wasn't exactly easy to forget that kind of roiling stomach, pounding head, and muscles that screamed at the smallest moment.  Trying to remember what happened brought back _**you believe you can kill a** **god?**_ followed by overturned trains and a massacre that happened in seconds, Jenova-Rinoa stepping so delicately over the carnage, Selphie's tiny, bloodied body curled against his own just before everything went dark.

_Selphie!_

Sitting up turned the pounding in his head into sledgehammer blows and he groaned, leaned over his knees until the urge to vomit passed.  It was worse than the time some of the guys had introduced him to a drink called an alien brain hemorrhage. _Head, limbs, and tongue still attached, everything else either bloody, torn, or aching._ Could be worse.

His gloves had disappeared, leaving his hands pale and chilled, and it took another few minutes for the red fog in his head to clear enough that he could see the floor underneath him was cold, dark, and mirror-like, what the fuck.  It was in an enormous vaulted chamber too organic and finely crafted to be man-made, more like a ridiculously large cave shaped by flowing water and time.  The stone was dark, effusing enough dim light that he finally saw Selphie lying in a sad, little heap some several yards away.

"Selphie - !" Irvine coughed harshly, barbed wire dragging through his throat.  He managed to pull himself onto his hands and knees before his stomach finally gave up and he retched dryly onto the floor.  Blood streaked his lips and he tried not to gag at the bile and blood coating his mouth.

Wiping his lips against his sleeve, he slowly began crawling on creaking knees over the strange floor, which looked like a ridiculously large slab of glassy volcanic stone, towards Selphie's body.  He leaned over her and felt for a pulse in her neck, too terrified to move her in case something vital had been snapped.  "Selphie," he rasped, her name echoing oddly in the unnatural chamber.  He wrapped his larger hand around her limp, clammy one.  "Selphie, darlin', can you hear me?"

She was on her side, face turned towards the floor so that her hair spilled over her features.  Blood was dried rust-red on her yellow dress, but it was the liberal amount that soaked her left side as though someone had nailed her with a bucket of paint that made his breath stop.  "Selphie, please," his voice trembled, _I don't want to be alone here_.

Her fingers tightened, just a little, over his own, and he nearly sobbed in relief.  "Irvine...?" she managed breathlessly, moaning when she tried to move and her body loudly decided that wasn't happening anytime soon.

"Don't move until we know how badly you're hurt, love."

"Can't do that...like this," she hissed between breaths, trying to turn onto her back.  Irvine helped as carefully as he could until she was settled on her back, biting off pained noises, a scarlet puddle on the floor where she'd been lying.

"Don't think...this means you can...take advantage of a lady."

Irvine snorted inelegantly as he pulled a knife from his belt and cut away the fabric over her side.  "Despite what you might've heard, blood doesn't actually do much for me."

It looked worse than it actually was.  Whatever spell Rinoa used had been split between the two SeeDs, halving the damage, with the brunt of it borne by the barrier Selphie had managed to cast at the last moment.  One or two of Irvine's own ribs were likely bruised, but Selphie's side was mostly burnt and broken skin that would scar but probably not handicap her.

"What's...the order here, doc?"

"Not exactly roses and sunshine, but it could be a lot worse."  He coughed again, swallowed a few times, trying to get rid of that barbed wire.  He leaned closer.  "Doesn't look like there's any fresh bleeding, darlin', but I don't see any scabbing, either."

"I'm a...walking natural wonder," she laughed faintly and with a wince.

"I don't know about the walking part for now," Irvine murmured, still gently exploring the wound with a frown.  Even with zero medical training he could tell there was something weird about the wound: it wasn't cauterized but caught somewhere between fresh bleeding and scabbing over.  Maybe it was something related to whatever spell Jenova had used.

Irvine neatly folded the fabric he'd cut and pressed it against Selphie's side, then took off his now torn and disgusting coat to wrap it around her.  The air was cool, though not cold enough to be a problem yet.

"Where are we?"

Irvine shrugged.  "Don't know, love.  I'm not exactly up-to-date on all the most romantic caves of questionable origin."  She rolled her eyes.  "I only just woke up," he went on more seriously.  "Last I remember is Jenova throwing that spell and coming towards us."

Selphie made a rueful face.  "I don't even remember... _that_ much...just lots of yelling and...flying trains."  She shifted, frowned, and blinked.  "Irvy, do you have Exeter?"

Hyne, the fuck kind of mercenary forgets to look for his weapons?  "No.  Must've fallen."  So this is what it felt like when parents misplaced one of their children in public.

Selphie sighed and stiffly pulled the coat tighter about herself.  "I don't feel my Strange Vision.  Damn it.  What about you?  Are you hurt?"

In any other situation Irvine might have milked it for all it was worth, moaning bravely about war wounds and letting the ladies fawn all over him, but now he just gave Selphie a wan smile and said roughly, "A bruised rib or two, nothing serious."

"You sound...like a frog," she giggled, which turned into a cough that left a few flecks of blood on her lips.  _Shit, shit, shit_ , Irvine thought frantically, _if she's got internal bleeding, Hyne knows I can't tell the difference between a scalpel and a cleaver, blades were always Squall's thing -_

And if he weren't so squeamish about Junctioning and letting Guardian Forces root around in his brain like pigs looking for truffles, maybe he would've been been _useful_ right about then.  Selphie had Carbuncle, but even if Carbuncle wasn't drained from Jenova he still wouldn't be particularly helpful.  Moving slowly, wincing at the shooting aches in his side, Irvine carefully lifted Selphie's head from the hard floor and resettled it in his lap.  She smiled tiredly as he brushed the hair from her face.

"Stop moping, this...isn't your fault," she told him sternly, still having trouble catching her breath.  "I can hear you...beating yourself up from here.  You're gonna start...turning into Squall."

Irvine snorted softly and admitted, "I just don't know what to do, love."

"We wait until I remember...what it feels like to be human."  She closed her eyes.  "Then we go kick some alien ass."

...

_**mother needs you, my son** _

...

If the other SeeDs had known that Squall and Shiva had achieved 100% compatibility, so intertwined that the cold blue in Squall's eyes wasn't entirely family genetics, they probably would've staged an intervention.  Who knew what powerful, presumably-immortal forces of nature could do to a squishy little human mind?  Squall didn't see the need to enlighten them as to why Lion Heart glowed with Ice magic without a spell ever being cast.

_"Diamond Dust!"_

Shiva's skin refracted the morning sunlight into thousands of tiny prisms, her magic flowing around and inside Squall and Lion Heart, insinuating itself into skulls so that the monsters would lurch awkwardly before toppling over dead with frost-lined nostrils and eye sockets.  She watched Squall fight, ruthless despite the turmoil she could taste in his heart, and smiled with a mother's pride.  When Squall stumbled, she was there to wrap freezing arms around him and breathe anesthetizing cold over the pain.  Sweat soaked the hair on his forehead as he fought back upright, and Shiva was about to let him go when she heard

_**Squall.** _

It was invasive and not quite enough to do any real harm, _yet_ , but this was someone stepping right into _her_ territory and that _would not do_.  She released her hold on her corporeal form and slid along the thread that led back to Squall's soul, regretting that her lack of finesse made him grunt with unexpected discomfort.

_**Reunion.  
** _

That voice was spreading like gangrene in what appeared as a gangrenous green-black to her inhuman sight, clambering over fragments of dreams and crawling beneath half-forgotten memories that belonged to _her_.  It wasn't another Guardian but something much more foul, more unnatural.  It was the same presence that had tried to take Squall from her the same night that Cloud Strife called from Esthar.

 _Leave!_ Shiva hissed, and met the poisonous green in a storm of white and blue and grey and all the elemental fury of an ice storm that could tear down whole forests and fleets of ships.  It seemed like that would be enough, that victory would break sweet and thick over her tongue, but the voice suddenly found a thread in Squall's heart that was the same soft green as another boy's eyes, the same boy that had broken Squall's heart so long ago, and the voice latched on with a leech's tenacity.  The sudden switch in power threw Shiva away.

_**I** **am the Calamity.** _

 Shiva was hurled somewhere unreachable, leaving gaping holes where her roots of magic and love and possessiveness had been wound so deeply into Squall's being, but not before she heard Squall screaming in agony.

...

Seifer heard a human and vaguely familiar cry before his vision tunneled and he fell to his knees with a hoarse groan, Hyperion clattering to the ground with a metallic clang, his gloved hands gripping his hair hard enough to rip it right out of his scalp.

...

Cloud felt it seconds before his head blossomed with familiar pain.  It was as familiar as a lover - and he would know, wouldn't he - and it brought back all the years spent wondering if there was a such a person named Cloud Strife at all.

_**failure** _

_**my puppet** _

...

Quistis, Zell, and the citizens of Dollet watched, dumbfounded, as the seemingly endless horde of monsters suddenly dropped dead and left a ringing silence.  Carefully, Quistis prodded a corpse with Save-the-Queen's long handle, noting the blood oozing from eyes and what might have been nostrils if she squinted and used some imagination. 

Zell blinked and flexed his aching hands.  "The hell just happened?"

...

There were places on the Planet, generally in colder regions, where the Lifestream still welled up in fountains of liquid crystal and formed shallow pools edged in raw materia.  One of these pools had been left undisturbed for centuries as more convenient magic springs were found and the Summons evolved into more user-friendly Guardian Forces, the hexagonal crystalline structure of the materia allowed to grow naturally and produce a soft glow that lit up its remote little cavern.  Now, that soft glow was cranked up to blinding light.

**_my son  
_ **

The upwelling of Lifestream thrashed violently, turned smoky-dark.

_**mother needs you** _

The materia closest to the fountain overloaded, cracked, and shattered.

_Hello, Mother._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The [alien brain hemorrhage](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/ae/62/59/ae62598031476c539cc36138e1503a48.jpg) cocktail.


	13. In Which Everybody Brings Everyone Else Up to Speed with the Plot

... **  
**

" _Aeris? Is this the Promised Land?"_

" _No, Cloud, I'm sorry. It won't be until you can forgive yourself and let go."_

_But he couldn't._

" _Do you love me, Cloud?"_

_He looked at Sephiroth and couldn't find the words._

" _Do you know what's ridiculous about ShinRa? It pillages and lies and kills in the name of finding the Promised Land, and that's exactly what keeps ShinRa from finding it."_

The nausea was as bad as Zack finding the most twisted backwater route for a road trip. Cloud pulled himself back onto his feet with a quiet groan. _My name is Cloud Strife. I was born in Nibelheim and was never a SOLDIER. Zack died to save me, Aeris died because of my mistakes, and Tifa never gave up on me._

Sanity: check. Awesome. Long experience meant he kept hold of Ultima as his head cracked open, so basically it was just another day, and it helped that there weren't any fangs or tentacles aiming for his face, which was – _weird_ , actually. He looked around and, if he didn't know better, he'd have said that they had all dropped dead where they stood. At least it simplified things.

A sudden piercing, achingly familiar cry thundered over Dollet, kicking Cloud's heart into high gear and pushing him into a run towards its source, hope sticking bittersweet in his throat.

…

Vincent felt like shit and his body was very determined to make sure he knew it.

Once the scales, claws, and horns had retreated back under his skin, he crumpled boneless to his hands and knees and puked out what felt like a significant percentage of his organs. It was mostly bile, and it burned his throat so badly he dry-heaved again, the rock and gravel under his bare palms and knees making him wince as he let himself fall onto his side. CHAOS' bloodlust had subsided once more into the usual vague, unformed craving he could ignore, but it'd be interesting to see how long it would take a few mercenaries to figure out who had been the most vicious monster of all.

"Vincent?"

 _I'm finally dying_ , he thought nonsensically. _I'm dying and I'm hearing dead people._

A hand in cool leather brushed the hair from his sweaty face. Someone short was kneeling over him, radiating concern and hope and maybe a little bit of craziness in his mako-bright eyes.  "Cloud?"

It _was_ , it _was_ Cloud, that brave and terrified kid who'd saved the world once or twice and then disappeared from Edge with no warning, no explanation, no clue as to where he'd apparently evaporated. Yuffie had been of the opinion that Cloud ran off with some young, cute thing ("That's sexist, Yuffie!" – "How is that sexist, I never said it was with a _woman._ ") while Cid, in the dimness of a smoky bar, thought it was a little less romantic.

" _You and the kid, Vincent, you're too much alike. You take everyone else's crap and make it your own. Get too far in someone else's shit and you'll drown. Or choke. Whatever. Point is, don't be such an arrogant asshole to think that the world revolves around you and people can't take responsibility for their own fuckery. I hate to say it, but maybe it just got to be too much for him."_

The soothing calm of a Restore washed over him, cooling the fire burning in his muscles and easing the post-transformation exhaustion. Cloud grasped his shoulders and helped him sit up, Vincent's naked legs sprawling heedlessly in front of him, his hair twisted into a nightmare; it didn't even occur to him to be self-conscious, and Cloud didn't seem to notice his nudity.  Science experiments rarely did.

"Where's Death Penalty?" Cloud asked. Gods, he spoke with the same husky softness as he had centuries ago. Vincent answered in a voice like a meat grinder, and Cloud nodded, disappeared, giving Vincent a few minutes to pull himself back together before reappearing with Death Penalty wrapped in Vincent's red cloak and clothes. Vincent managed to get himself dressed before Cloud's arms were suddenly wrapped around his torso like a straightjacket.

"How," he tried, and Vincent said quietly, "After you left, I went to sleep in the Northern Crater so that I would be there if Jenova ever returned." It was strange to have another person so close, especially Cloud, and he hesitantly settled his brassy claw on Cloud's hip. "Why are you here, Cloud? You aren't immortal."

Cloud stepped back, looking tired and smaller compared to the enormous blade slung over his back. "I went with the Cetra. I'd hoped…but then Jenova…" He trailed off, fixing his gaze on some target that was definitively not Vincent. Vincent nodded and wondered if this was Aeris' doing or someone, some _thing_ , else's, if it'd been motivated by honest concern or wanting to keep a good weapon stashed away for a rainy day.

But Cloud was smiling at him, small and slightly lopsided but still an honest-to-gods _smile_. "At least I didn't have to go through the fucking ShinRa mansion again to find you."

" _Help us!"_

The voice that cut through the air wasn't human but it wasn't Jenova, either; it was somewhere between an alto and a low tenor synchronized over the piercing sound of breaking glass. Vincent turned sharply, Cloud mirroring him.

"Someone you know?" he asked casually. Cloud shook his head and they took off, picking their way through clumps of dead flesh, until they saw a tall woman and a short, tattooed man leaning over what appeared to be a human body.

"Cloud!" the woman yelled, "Squall, he's – "

Well, look at that, _Shiva herself_ in all her coldly glittering glory was kneeling and cradling the human body in her thin arms. The air temperature had dropped sharply and a layer of frost was slowly thickening over the immediate area.

" _Your mistress has taken him,"_ she hissed, and if a snake could speak through ice it would've sounded warmer than she did.

"Jenova is _not_ my mistress," Cloud hissed back.  He knelt down beside the body – one with a scar crossing his face in a mirror to Seifer's, Vincent noted, how interesting – and pressed his fingertips against an unnaturally pale temple. The woman and tattooed man, most likely SeeDs if Seifer's S.O.S. had gotten through, were tense but silent.

"He's just unconscious," Cloud finally declared, implying that there was something about this unconscious man that only he could sense.  Common sense placed all bets on Jenova.

Shiva's arms tightened around the man, serpentine eyes half-lidded as they flicked from Vincent to Cloud with recognition.  " _I am surprised to see the brokenhearted one and the puppet alive._ _I wonder, does adversity truly breed strength, or simply desperation?"_

Vincent was starting to understand why his penchant for being cryptic tended to piss people off.

…

Seifer knew that, on occasion, he made decisions that maybe weren't always the best. He could see Quistis and Zell the Chicken-shit, Hyne's balls, and their darling commander wrapped up in a goddess like a special snowflake, pun intended. For a moment his ears rang with his own _d_ _on't think this makes us friends, Leonhart_ , and he could feel lean muscle flexing under his hands, bony hips pressing into his own, fingernails carving out long lines parallel to his spine.

"Almasy," Vincent was saying, which naturally drew the others' attention and their _judgment_. Immediately he slouched with supreme nonchalance, tilting his chin up, couldn't help the automatic reaction.

"Well, look what the cat – "

He didn't even see Zell move until there was a fist planting itself into his face and knocking him back a good five feet, but he didn't have a chance to retaliate before Zell was _actually hugging him_.

"Seifer, you asshole, I should be beating the shit outta you."

Knocked for a loop, perhaps literally, Seifer looked at Quistis and met an inscrutable stare. A guy he didn't recognize but who reminded him of Zell said, "We need to get Squall somewhere safe and see to the civilians."

There was too much touchy-feely going on. He pushed Zell off and dredged up a smirk from his endless well of being a dick. "Ain't no civilians here," he replied as a cheer rose up behind him, spreading in a wave of victorious relief over the city. "Far as I can tell, these poor bastards are heroes."

…

The damage to the city was worse than Vincent had dared hope. The only part that remained unscathed was the innermost districts where the municipal buildings and two hospitals were located. Deaths of humans and monsters alike were still being tallied, but by late afternoon the figure was already reaching into the hundreds. It didn't measure up to the devastation from Meteor, but it did surpass the collateral from Midgar's fallen Plate.

Seifer took command without asking anyone, backed by Raijin and Fujin, and what might have been a tumultuous reunion between the trio and the SeeDs, judging by the tension, was luckily derailed. Vincent was now ensconced in Dollet's city hall with Cloud, the SeeDs, and their unconscious commander lying on a makeshift pallet. Shiva had disappeared in a flurry of light and snow so they could move him.

"Excuse me, Mr. Valentine," said a nervous young woman that appeared at his side with a bowl of warm stew. He accepted it with his human hand and word of gratitude. Cloud held a bowl as well but hadn't seemed to notice it, but then, Jenova could do that to a person's appetite.

"So, Cloud, how do you two know each other?" Zell asked to break the awkward silence hanging over their circle around Squall. Exhausted volunteers bustled around behind them, keeping a respectful distance as they tended to the wounded that didn't fit in the overflowing hospitals. Vincent mourned the loss of the private little vacation cottages.

"We fought together," Cloud explained shortly, staring into his bowl as though the meaning of life floated there alongside the tough meat and thin sheen of oil on its surface.

"What can you tell about these monsters?" asked Quistis. Her eyes were sharp behind her glasses, analytical and reminding Vincent strongly of a professor.

"It isn't a coincidence that they appeared now. They carried the Jenova factor."

Vincent tilted his head in agreement.

"Are you like Cloud and Squall then?" Zell looked between them. "Can you, uh, feel her too?"

"No." No need to explain that he was the subject of the CHAOS Project that preceded all the Jenova nonsense. "Cloud, how is Commander Leonhart infected?"

"What do you know about Sorceresses and their Knights?"

"Very little, though there is obviously a connection between them and Jenova."

"There is," Cloud confirmed. "The Sorceresses possess the part of Jenova that survived the Northern Crater and the Lifestream, and the Knights are those who gave up their autonomy in return for power of their own. Squall's former lover was a Sorceress and he her Knight."

Essentially, Sephiroth, then. How exciting.

"We didn't come here for the monsters," Quistis admitted. "We've heard about unusual levels and types of monsters, but we had no idea they'd come so far south. We figured Dollet was the most likely place for Rinoa – for Jenova – to go."

"Squall's former lover, I assume."

"Yes. Now," her eyes narrowed, "what are you doing in the company of a man who's an internationally wanted criminal on top of being a Knight?"

"We sure know how to pick them," Cloud commented under his breath.  Vincent smiled briefly, then explained how he'd followed the hordes from the northernmost continent and added shrewdly, "You weren't just looking for this Rinoa, were you?"

Zell bit his lip. Cloud answered instead. "As long as Jenova is free, Almasy and Squall are both liabilities."

"Fuck that noise, I ain't no liability."

Seifer and his two shadows appeared from behind them. While Raijin hesitated, Fujin blithely seated herself on the floor on Vincent's left side with no concern for the tense atmosphere. "SIT."

Raijin did so, moving slowly, but Seifer crossed his arms and looked sulky. Vincent saw Quistis' indecision, Zell's growing irritation, and turned to his right. "Cloud? There is a matter I wish to discuss with you."

Cloud glanced at the others, nodded, and as they both got to their feet Seifer interrupted, "'Cloud'? Is this the guy that Sephiroth or whatever was talking about?"

_Damn._

"Sephiroth?" Cloud sounded shaken. "How did you – "

Vincent forcibly grabbed Cloud's arm and dragged him away.

…

Distracted as she was by Seifer and Squall lying unconscious for probably-evil reasons, Quistis was only dimly aware of Cloud and – Vincent Valentine? Maybe he'd once made adult films – getting up and walking away to huddle conspiratorially in a corner. The silence dragged on.

"This is fun," said Seifer.

Zell grit his teeth. Obviously the honeymoon period was over.  "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't drag you back to Garden and give you the thrashing you deserve."

"Besides the fact that you'd lose?"

It was like nothing had changed: Seifer acting like an asshole, Zell ready to throw a fit, Fujin looking bored and Raijin waiting for the chance to jump in, and it made Quistis want to _scream_. Maybe none of them had been particularly close at the orphanage, but every so often she would still wake up with the memory of the horrific electrical burns on Squall's body and the betrayal that was Seifer standing on the other side of the battlefield. "Why, Seifer?"

She braced herself for something stupid, maybe _she had great tits_ , but instead he shrugged tensely. "Why not?"

"Because we were a f – "

"A _family?"_ he spat. "Trepe, we didn't even know we'd come from the same damn orphanage until all the shit hit the fan."

"You still betrayed Garden and _us._ "

"Bullshit. Garden was _thrilled_ to get rid of me and Fujin and Raijin, and you know it. There was jackshit there for us while Ultimecia offered the gods-damned _world_."

"Did you really hate us that much?" Zell demanded, crossing his arms defensively.

Seifer's laugh was an ugly sound.  "You really think you mattered that much to me? Selphie was a newbie, Trepe's an instructor, _you_ were just annoying, and Hyne knows none of us remembered Irvine."

"And Squall?" Quistis shot back. "Maybe you wouldn't have been able to tell, but he was hurt when you left."

Seifer eyed Squall's unnaturally still body. "You could kill his dog and he wouldn't bat an eye. The only thing the princess cares about is his gunblade."

"You know that's not true," Quistis argued, and Seifer sneered.

"Oh, of course not, he has _Rinoa_." There was some kind of emotion coloring his voice, but Quistis was hesitant to pin a label on it; that had been a mistake she'd made too often with Seifer in the past.

"Dude, Squall and Rinoa broke up ages ago," said Zell. "She was in Galbadia until, uh…yeah."

"Until what?"

"Seifer, what do you know about something named Jenova?"

"Enough," he hedged, wary of the sudden topic change. "I'm guessing she's the reason you're here, not because you got the emergency call."

Quistis explained how Jenova had managed to possess Rinoa, who Cloud was, why both Seifer and Squall were liabilities. She added that Selphie and Irvine were presumably in Galbadia searching for Rinoa, and in the meantime the SeeDs came north figuring the monsters weren't a coincidence. During all this exposition, Seifer sat in Vincent's spot beside Fujin and stole Vincent's bowl of stew for himself, and when Quistis finished they all sat in awkward quiet around an unconscious body.

"Shit," Seifer muttered eloquently, threading his fingers through his hair and resting his elbows on his knees. Zell mustered some kind of wordless agreement.

"PLAN?"

Quistis chewed her lip. "We're not exactly sure. But right now, all we can do is wait for Squall to wake up so he can talk to Cloud and Vincent. They're the only two with any sort of experience concerning Jenova and what she's likely to do."

"If she's anything like the Sorceresses," Seifer drawled, "she'll distract you with big speeches and send you spinning in circles before smacking you with the _real_ plan. It's all about appearances: keep the heroes busy with small fry until you're ready to one-hit kill 'em."

Quistis scowled. "You think this thing with Rinoa is a 'small fry' thing?"

"Obviously. You really think Jenova would show her hand so soon? The only reason Ultimecia sent me after you was to be distracting until she launched the whole Time Compression thing. Nah, Jenova's got something else planned."

The old Seifer would never have sounded so bitter, so cynical in a way better suited to Squall.

"What's her final play, then?" asked Zell, and Quistis wondered, _Why didn't Cloud realize this sooner, and if he did, why wouldn't he have said anything?_

"Fuck if _I_ know, dumbass."

…

The moment they were reasonably out of earshot from the rest of the group, Cloud shrugged out of Vincent's grip.  "Talk."

"His name is Seifer and he was a Knight. Some months ago there was an event they're calling a 'time compression.' From what I can gather, his connection to a Sorceress was forcibly destroyed."

Cloud winced. That would've been a rather unpleasant experience. It was a wonder Seifer retained as much sanity as he had.

"He's not entirely stable," Vincent continued, possibly reading Cloud's mind. "He has powerful hallucinations and can't use magic without severe consequences."

"What does this have to do with Sephiroth? How the hell does he even _know_ about Sephiroth?"

Vincent visibly hesitated, which meant he was about to say something Very Bad. He briefly described a dream, a stupid _dream_ , but when Cloud gave him an incredulous look Vincent coldly stared right back in a distinct don't-you-doubt-me-I-am-never-wrong air. With sudden intensity, Vincent asked, "Can you feel him, Cloud?"

 _No_ , Cloud wanted so desperately to say, _no, he's only a memory, that's all_ , but if anyone understood the power of a memory then it would be Cloud, wouldn't it? You've always tried so hard to hide behind denial, said the Zack part of him. And when he stopped running, when he looked beneath the lies, he found absolute certainty.  "I think Sephiroth is alive."

Vincent didn't say anything.

Cloud's stomach was twisting like a storm-tossed airship.  "Why won't she let him go?" he whispered rhetorically, the words cracking down the middle, and his fist lashed out at the nearest wall in a shower of plaster bits and splintered wood. He wanted to hate Aeris, the Cetra, Vincent and his perpetual stoicism, Sephiroth and the fact that in the end he hadn't been as strong as Cloud and Zack had so firmly believed. But he couldn't. All he had was himself and the cold, cold Nibelheim winters.

"I'll be back later," Cloud muttered, striding off towards the double doors that opened onto the ruined city. Vincent let him go.


	14. In Which Squall Is Getting Real Tired of Everyone's Shit

The world was blinding to eyes that hadn't seen anything for centuries, and Sephiroth blinked slowly, waiting for his vision to remember that there were more colors than searingly-bright green.

Eventually he figured out he was naked.  Hmm.  The mako spring in which he sat freezer-burned his flesh.  When he lifted a hand above the surface of the pool, he had trouble distinguishing between the crystalline mako and the paleness of his skin that would do a corpse proud.  Perhaps that was appropriate, all things considered.

A little while later and his body worked out which bits were legs and which ones were arms, and the bits that turned out to be feet found purchase on the pool's rocky bottom so Sephiroth could stand, slowly, wavering until he rediscovered balance.  Mako sluiced down his body, dripped down his hair, brought out goosebumps on oversensitive flesh.  He waded carefully out of the pool towards a rock on dry floor and seated himself on it, pulling his hair over a shoulder and twisting it to wring out the mako.  Some silver strands tangled around his fingers and his first facial expression in ages was a faint frown.

Still blinking slowly, Sephiroth looked around.  There wasn't anything really exciting.

 _("What about_ my _sadness?")_

The cave felt vaguely familiar, though whether it was the cave itself or something that might have happened in the cave was frustratingly unclear.  There was a weight missing from his left hand.  A pointy thing.  A sword?  That sounded correct.  There was a weight on his right side that was _not_ meant to be there, large and black and feathered and which suggested an oversized crow somewhere would be walking around with a wing hacked off.

_(There was a fire that burned away the edges of night, and smoke curled beneath his coat like dragon's breath, and the ends of his long hair were streaked with ash as he walked through the village.  Righteousness made him strong, knowing as he did that cruelty must come before kindness and that cleansing must precede enlightenment.)_

Sephiroth let out several harsh breaths through his nose to get rid of an imagined stench. 

_(The villagers ran, but they were weak and his materia caught them easily.  He saw a blonde woman standing silently at her front door, small and middle-aged with a motherly apron tied around her waist, and there was something in her fair coloring and the defiance in her features that was too familiar.)_

"Oh, gods."

_(It was the boy's mother and he took particular pleasure in watching her burn.)_

"Cloud..."

_("My puppet.  Mine to use as I see fit.")_

"Planet," Sephiroth whispered hoarsely, vision tunneling towards darkness, "what have I done?"

...

A loud crash made all the SeeDs' hands fly to their weapons.  "The fuck's eating _him?"_ Seifer snarked when they realized the sound came from Cloud's fist half-buried in a wall.  Quistis considered the strength it would take to cause that kind of damage and thought, _Shit_.

"He fought Sephiroth a long time ago," she explained.

Raijin fidgeted.  "Vincent won't even talk about Sephiroth, yanno?  I don't think I ever wanna meet this guy."

"Great," said Seifer, "now that you've said that, it's practically guaranteed to happen."

Raijin turned to Fujin for help, but she shrugged.  "PROBABLY."

He groaned.  Quistis had to try very hard not to find it all charmingly juvenile and got up, brushing her hands over her skirt.  "Zell, I'm going back to _Ragnarok_ , someone should be there in case Xu or Selphie try to get in contact."

Zell shifted to take her spot beside Squall.  "Say 'hi' for me."

She considered saying something to Seifer and his two shadows, but even Fujin's typically expressionless face was drawn and tired.  So she just said, "I'll be back soon," and threaded between the wounded and the volunteers helping them, wondering if there was any possible hope of (re)building their broken little family.

...

Under the stench of funeral fires, Dollet smelled like hot asphalt and impending rain.  Walking down the street was a deadly hazard, making Cloud pick his way carefully over shattered concrete and splintered wood.  The evening sky was lit by the eerie orange glow of the fires where able-bodied citizens dutifully dragged monster carcasses to the city's outskirts for mass cremation; the last thing they needed was a disease outbreak.  The first thing _Cloud_ needed, on the other hand, was something to do so he wouldn't think about other towns on fire and too much death.  Unless it was the death of monsters, which sounded appealing, but unfortunately him the smoke from the fires would keep anything still alive away from the city.  Woe.

The click of Quistis' heels coming up behind him made Cloud reluctantly slow his strides.  How people managed to fight in skirts and heels would always be the true superhuman power, and judging by the way his own lavender silk dress had had a tendency to get in the way of his sword, it wasn't one of his.

"What happened?" she asked when she caught up, peering at him over the top of her spectacles.

"Nothing."

She hummed disbelievingly.  "People generally don't punch holes in walls for no reason."

 _Normal_ people, maybe.  He'd earned a fit of existential angst, damn it.

"I'm going to the ship to check in with Garden."  She touched his arm lightly, but she withdrew her hand when he flinched.  "I can only imagine how difficult this must be for you.  If Ultimecia ever came back..."  She shook her head.  "Can we trust you, Cloud?"

His lips quirked.  "I can't even trust myself half the time.  Trust Vincent."

The sharpness of her gaze reminded him vaguely of Scarlet, sans malice, so not really like Scarlet all.  She nodded, paused, then headed away towards the ship, leaving Cloud free to continue on towards the cremation fires.  If he couldn't kill things, he could at least help burn them.

...

"Selphie, love, you sure that's a good idea?"

"Of course," she replied confidently, belying the death-grip she had on Irvine's forearm.  "Lying around won't make things shiny.  _And_ I haven't lost any more blood."

Disturbing, but true: still no sign of scabbing but still no sign of bloody gushing, either.  It was like the muscle had been flash-frozen without the actual freezing part.  After a while, the pain in both their bodies had faded to a dull ache.

Irvine steadied her when her legs trembled, and Selphie grinned.  "It's all right, Mom, I'm a big girl."

"Yeah, you are," he quipped, but the attempted flirting just died an embarrassing death.

"All bark, no bite."  She let go of his arm.  "All right, partner, let's case this joint and see where the hell we are."

They scrutinized the cavern.  It hadn't changed since the first time Irvine looked around.  "Looks like something out of Zell's novels.  The ones with aliens."

"How would _you_ know that?" Selphie asked shrewdly.  She smirked when he pointedly ignored her in favor of the walls, which...huh.

"Selphie, come look at this," he said distractedly, gesturing towards one of the slick-smooth walls.  It was made of the same obsidian-like stuff as everything else, but behind its semi-translucent surface there were weirdly straight veins of copper or gold that didn't seem natural.  "Is it just me or do those look like the girders you use in construction?"

She limped over.  "You know, it kinda looks familiar."

They began pacing the length of the wall mostly for lack of anything else to do.  "Well, we know it was Jenova, not Rinoa.  Where do aliens make their HQ?" he mused aloud.

"The space bar?"

"Oh my _gods_."

"Ha!  But seriously, Cloud didn't mention her favorite vacation spot, just the Lifestream."

"You think it might be where we are now?"  Didn't seem like the kind of place the Planet would manifest, but who knew what a millions-year-old entity was thinking.

Selphie thought for a moment before shaking her head.  "Nah, from what he said, there'd be a lot more green, and the only reason Squall's been there is because of the whole Knight thing."

They moved slowly, uncomfortable but not in any real pain, until an acidic smell reminiscent of magic springs stung Irvine's nose.  "Are you hungry?" he asked abruptly.

"Uh, no, not really, although I could go for a cheeseburger.  Why?"

"We've been awake for what's probably hours and unconscious for longer than that.  We should be be _starving_."

She opened her mouth, closed it with a puzzled face, tried again.  "You're right."

They faced each other for a long moment.  "Guess it's a good thing, right?" he said weakly.

...

_**They don't care for you, Squall.  They're going to leave you behind the way the rest of your family did.** _

_It was snowy and cold but nothing like the world Shiva had made inside of him.  She wasn't there, something wasn't right, but Squall had forgotten why it mattered because he wasn't Squall, he was Mother's son and he was a god in his own right._

I'm a SeeD _, a little thought whispered_.  I never wanted to be anything else.

_**They'll all leave you the way your first lover did.** _

That _picked at old wounds like few other things could, but whatever, Seifer left because he wanted to.  There was nothing more to say and the matter was closed._

_**Only I can give you everything you want, my son, my love.** _

_And Squall_

woke up.  The pallet was hard beneath his back where his tailbone and shoulderblades dug into it.  Without opening his eyes he could sense that he was in a large space full of people making a lot of echoing noise.  Zell's aftershave was a nearly solid cloud hovering at his side.

"Hey, you're awake," Zell declared cheerfully, even though Squall hadn't moved.  "Welcome back.  You've been out of it for, what, eight or nine hours.  It's about twenty-hundred hours right now.  We had to carry you into City Hall and Quistis is at _Ragnarok_ waiting to hear from, uh, just about anyone.  Questions?"

"What happened?" Squall croaked.  The cobwebs of his dream - hallucination? - clung stubbornly to his thoughts and made the world move too slowly.

"You fainted in Shiva's arms, all the monsters dropped dead for unknown reasons, and Sephiroth is alive, according to this one guy named Vincent that you've never met but who knew Cloud when they fought Jenova the first time hundreds of years ago.  Cloud disappeared somewhere, probably to have an existential meltdown."

Seriously, he ends up unconscious _just once_...  He tried to lever himself up, batted away Zell's hand when Zell tried to push him back down, and managed to sit up properly.

"Look at that, the princess is awake."

Every muscle in Squall's body locked up.  Seifer stood several feet away, well out of arm's reach, as haughty as ever and bringing back the jagged memory of lightning crackling over and through vulnerable flesh.  The lack of a trench coat, worn for so long as an armor of its own kind, made Seifer smaller, somehow.  "Seifer," he murmured without thinking, wished fervently for Shiva's chilling cold to take away the nauseating tangle of anger and hurt and animal _fear_ and Hyne knew what else that was making him lightheaded.   Squall got to his feet, slowly, because if he moved too quickly then the tension in his muscles would finally snap.  "When Cloud comes back, we're going back to Garden to regroup," Squall said, tilting his head in Zell's direction to address him without taking his eyes off Seifer.  "Jenova herself obviously isn't here.  Seifer, Fujin, and Raijin will be returning with us."

Seifer arched an eyebrow, still imperious, still an asshole, still able to make Squall question if he wanted to kill him or kiss him.  "You do remember we're not SeeDs, right?  We're not going anywhere we don't want to."

"You three were never actually removed from Balamb Garden's roster.  Technically, you're still AWOL and therefore still accountable to said Garden.  You specifically, Seifer, are an international fugitive, and Galbadia's been pressuring me to hunt you down and hand you over to a tribunal.  I won't let that happen."

"Gee, I didn't know you cared," Seifer sneered, and Squall neutrally replied, "You don't deserve to die a political prisoner."

"Really?  Because last time I checked, world domination is generally frowned upon in polite society."

"You failed."  That slight flinch was more viciously satisfying than Squall wanted to admit.  "Besides, as a mercenary, you were acting within the bounds of a contract with a client, and as a name on the active roster, Balamb Garden has legal custody of you."

Seifer stared at him incredulously.  "You're using Garden rhetoric to justify the world nearly being destroyed?"

Why were people always shocked when Squall played politics?  He may be socially inept, but he wasn't _stupid_.  Zell had started fidgeting halfway through this little byplay and finally broke in.  "What the hell is - Vincent?"

A man straight out of a Gothic romance materialized in a blur of red and black beside Zell.  Cloud's old friend, then.  "How are you feeling?" Vincent asked.  A voice like that, he must've learned to speak with velvet and whiskey.

"I'm fine."

Seifer snorted.

"Jenova will redouble her efforts to bring you to heel," said Vincent.  "She will not fail again.  She will promise you your greatest dreams and bring nothing but death."

"Cheerful."

Vincent slanted a look at Seifer before abruptly turning towards the city hall's doors where Cloud was walking in, covered in ash and gore and noticeably calmer.  "You're awake," Cloud observed, looking Squall up and down.

"Without a kiss from Prince Charming, no less."

Squall pretended momentary deafness in Seifer's direction.  "Sephiroth's alive?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"The last thing you remember, was it Jenova?  Er, Rinoa?"

Squall nodded, little more than a short jerk of his head.

"I think she was trying to summon all the clones.  Knights.  People with some part of her, anyway."  Cloud crossed his arms and shifted his weight from foot to foot.  "Seifer and I felt her, Rinoa probably focused on you in particular, and Sephiroth...he hasn't been very human in a long time."

"Most likely," Vincent agreed, and with a complete break in character Cloud stepped back with a noise of frustration and made a sharp, cutting motion with a gory hand, snarling, "Fuck Jenova, fuck the Cetra, they should've gotten some other pathetic bastard to do their dirty work - "

"I suggest," Vincent murmured, "that you if you wish to see this all come to an end, you accept what has happened and not allow the past to prevent you from acting now."

"Wow," said Cloud, "you win the award for the most hypocritical one-liner ever made."

For a moment Squall thought they would come to blows and reached for Lion Heart; Cloud's eyes were goddamned glowing and Vincent was as unreadable as a marble statue, but then Vincent said softly, "Astute as ever, Zack."

Cloud recoiled, and for a moment Squall could see a scared teenage boy so much like the reflection Squall had seen after the D-District Prison that he reflexively deflected, interrupted, said, "We'll return to Garden immediately.  We're only wasting time here."

The quick pace back to the _Ragnarok_ was the most awkward fucking thing Squall had ever experienced.  He kept his eyes forward so he wouldn't have to deal with whatever drama was probably happening behind him and pretend that Seifer, so close at his shoulder, wasn't actually there.  It wasn't working very well.  At least Seifer disappeared somewhere in the bowels of the ship like a groundhog into its hole once they got there.

Quistis, thankfully, was in the copilot's seat, exactly where she should be, and decidedly _not_ dripping angst all over the floor.

"Have you spoken to Xu?" Squall asked, bracing an arm against the low jamb of the cockpit and leaning in. 

"Squall!  I'm glad you're awake.  And yes, I have.  She got a transmission from Selphie and Irvine at around sixteen-hundred hours, Galbadia time.  They found Rinoa's apartment trashed but no Rinoa.  They reported in about an hour before their train was scheduled to leave and she hasn't heard from them since.

"Around sixteen-thirty, there was some kind of attack at the Timber station."  Her voice lowered.  "Twenty-two people were killed, over a hundred more wounded.  Four trains were reduced to scrap.  No one saw what actually happened, but theories range from a rogue Guardian Force to a freak gas explosion.  Selphie and Irvine haven't been found among the casualties, but right now they're listed MIA."

Fuck.  "Take _Ragnarok_ back to Garden and alert Xu."

When Quistis started the engines, they made a horrific grinding noise that made everyone in the ship cringe.  "Something with wings must've  hit something," she called back.  "I need someone to go down to the engine room and run diagnostics."

"I will," Squall volunteered, heading towards a lower deck.

"You want any help?" Zell volunteered, but Squall just shook his head.  As he descended down the ladder, he heard Cloud ask, "Zell, Balamb Garden has vehicles of its own, right?" and when Zell said yes, Cloud added, "Does it have bikes?"

Irritated crazy people and modified bikes; that was the sound of a future headache, and Squall was momentarily deaf again. Convenient, that.

...

Getting run over by a herd of chocobos was the only explanation for the migraine cracking his skull apart as self-awareness trickled in.  The stone was cold and unforgiving under his bare skin, but he didn't much feel it.  Sephiroth wasn't feeling much of anything, really, except a vague sort of curiosity for why everything was so horrible and not just physically.

A few feet away from where Sephiroth lay, the mako spring glittered and shone a myriad colors that didn't all have names.  There had been someone, someone he knew well, who had blue eyes - not the same vibrant shade as the mako, of course, but still bright, and sometimes they'd been in a face that radiated happiness, and sadness, and anxiety, but also fear, pain, desperation _, despair._

Sephiroth's body seized but there wasn't anything left to vomit up.  He just sprawled uselessly on his side, staring at the way his fingers naturally curved when his hand lay palm-up and relaxed.  They were strong enough that he knew it took hardly any effort to leave dark bruises on tender skin.

Time passed as slow and thick as honey.  It took a while for the lack of _my son, my beloved_ to make him sit up, the world tilting a little dizzily, and while _she_ was still there in the back of his mind like the cold undercurrent of a river, there was also the quieter note of a steady, familiar heartbeat.  His, well, 'lover' was probably being too optimistic and 'puppet' wasn't exactly a term of endearment.  His Cloud, maybe.  Just Cloud.  Might be good to start referring to him as an individual person nowadays if Sephiroth planned on tracking him down.  Gods knew what Sephiroth was going to _do_ once he found the person he'd unintentionally used and later intentionally tortured, but that heartbeat pounded in his ears and what else was there to do but try anyway?

Bracing a hand against the rough rock wall of the cave, Sephiroth traced around the cave's circumference until he felt a draft of cold air.  He followed it to the mouth of a small tunnel, then followed the tunnel, pitch-black wherever thin veins of mako didn't glimmer like moonlight from the stone walls, until the draft became a harsh wind and the gloom brightened.  He saw the steep slopes of the Northern Crater covered in snow beneath a grey sky.  It was cold, made freezing by still-damp hair tangling around his thighs in the wind, pulling at the pinions of his wing. He had no idea what day it was - hell, no idea what _year_ it was - but better late than never, right?


	15. In Which Sephiroth Discovers the Power of Positive Thinking

The wound that some lucky monster's claw had scored in Cloud's side was mostly knitted by the time they all returned to the _Ragnarok_ , but it still throbbed.  That may have something to do with stubbornly pushing through the pain to toss monster corpses onto bonfires, possibly flavored with something like spite, but all that was worth having to now stand in the back of the  _Ragnarok_ with an arm pressed to his side.  Zack huffed, You always did tend towards the dramatic, kid.  Ain't the best way to go about making friends.

_Shut up._

Vincent, however, wouldn't let him skulk about in the shadows regretting the scene he'd made in the city hall.  "Cloud."

Startled, Cloud's head snapped up and his hand made an aborted movement towards Ultima.  "Vincent," he acknowledged, letting the remembered sense-smell of a Zack-hug (weapon polish, mako, general masculine sweat) fade away.

"You've been wounded," Vincent commented _sotto voce_ so the SeeDs wouldn't hear.  Cloud didn't know if the smell of blood or long-term familiarity had given him away.

"I'm fine."  Vincent gave him a clearly disbelieving look, and his eyes - there was exhaustion there, the post-CHAOS transformation tiredness carved into the corners, and worry, because Cloud wasn't the only person around who'd been there during Sephiroth's first reign of terror.  "Vincent," he said suddenly, the words trying to trip over themselves, "I'm sorry."

"I understand."

The thing was, Hojo might've claimed to be Sephiroth's father, but there were times, like now, when Vincent would tilt his head a certain way, speak in a particular timbre, that had all been reflected in a certain person like a silver mirror.  Cloud reached for his belt and pulled out a bangle.  "Here," he said, passing it over with the slots already occupied with some of the materia he'd managed to recall Vincent preferring.

Vincent accepted it with unusually obvious confusion.  "I was under the impression that materia no longer existed."

"If it does, I haven't seen it."  Seriously, though, what if there weren't any magic springs around or the monster needed to draw the correct spells?  It wasn't _right_.

Vincent was sliding on the bangle when he said casually, "I received a call from Tifa not long after you disappeared.  She said no one knew where you had gone and that you never said goodbye."

Something else to add to his laundry list of guilt, a fair distance below Aeris' death but still far above the time he'd stolen Tseng's lunch from the staff room and Zack had gotten blamed for it.  Zack had been looking over his shoulder and double-locking his door at night for two weeks, and he chalked up Tseng's dickishness to interdepartmental politics. He never did figure out why Tseng had been passive-aggressively out for blood.

"Cloud.  _Cloud_. _"_

Cloud twitched.  "Vincent?  Um, what were you saying?"

"Never mind.  It wasn't important."

...

When Squall found it, the main console was irregularly spitting out sparks.  He shrugged off his jacket, laid it over the back of a padded chair, and pulled off the sheet metal that covered the console's guts with a sharp twist.  From what Squall could remember of the  _Ragnarok's_ schematics, Quistis was right: some flying thing had somehow snapped something, and the result was a very unhappy airship.  He leaned forward, dangerously close to setting his hair on fire from the sparks (and wouldn't his fanclub be disappointed) and, glad he was in the habit of wearing leather gloves anyway, started pushing aside wires to reach other wires that did different things.  That was about the time that the unhurried footsteps of someone in heavy boots entered the room.

"Isn't this tempting," Seifer drawled without much heat at the sight of Squall bent over on his knees. 

Squall internally sighed, sat back on his heels, and gave Seifer a thoroughly unimpressed look from under his (unburned) hair.  "What do you want?"

Seifer folded his arms and leaned against the console just out of Squall's generous bubble of personal space.  "That's the big question, isn't it?  Thought I knew.  Turns out I didn't."

"What do you expect me to do?"

"I don't know, Princess, what do you normally do when stuck with damaged goods?"

Squall stood up and faced him squarely, unsurprised that the first two conversations they had since Ultimecia's defeat were biting and feeling very cynical about the whole thing.  "It was your decision, Seifer.  Ultimecia took advantage of your insecurities, but not only were you _aware_ of her doing so, you allowed it.  It's _your_ responsibility to deal with the fallout."

"So that's it?" Seifer straightened, took a step towards Squall.  "No 'I told you so'?  Not even going to take a swing or two at me?  It isn't like I haven't earned it."

"I'm not going to fix your guilt by punishing you."

"Why not?  The whole fucking world wants their pound of flesh, why not be first in line?"

"If you think that's what _I_ want," Squall murmured, "then there's nothing for us to talk about."

Seifer frowned, confused and surprised but trying, and failing, to hide it all behind a sneer.  "And what _do_ you want?"

"It doesn't matter anymore," replied Squall, dropping down to sit on his heels again and resume fiddling with the console's insides.

"Is this about - "

"Like you said," Squall interrupted, "we were only rivals.  Go away, I need to fix this before the ship blows up."

"Squall," Seifer started, but Squall kept his attention fixed on the metal and electricity in front of him - and wasn't _that_ a pleasant thought, electrodes and agonizing pain when he knew perfectly well that wasn't going to happen right then,  _why was he thinking about that_ \- and he waited for Seifer to say something cutting and horrible. 

Instead Seifer just walked away, and Squall's hands faltered.

...

Sephiroth might be more genetically modified than fast food but the mako in his body could only fight off the cold for so long.  His muscles were tightening up and making walking, already difficult in snow, even harder, and the wing wrapped as closely as possible around his naked body wasn't an ideal solution.  Normally he had an impeccable sense of direction, but his balance still funked out at odd times and his head felt like he'd been abruptly woken up from the middle of an intense dream.  He needed clothes and food.

A strong wind buffeted Sephiroth into the lee-side of a towering basalt rock.  His shoulder made an audible _thunk_ against the rock, but at least it cut down the freezing wind while he huddled there for a few minutes.  The spines of the feathers were painfully tweaked where he'd hit the stone.  At the rate he was going, in all honesty, he wasn't going to make it to civilization, and where was madness without the side effects when you needed to know how to fly?  He could dimly feel wind through the feathers, looking down on the earth from so high he was divinity itself, relishing the strength of inhuman limbs that carried him to unexplored heights, and even if these were the memories of a clone he _knew_ them as intimately as if they were his own.

But thoughts of near-invincibility didn't actually make a person invincible and Sephiroth's body was starting to shut down.  He thought,  _Could I do it again_ , and also,  _What if this is what breaks me again_ , but the Lifestream was pure energy, pure force that could be manipulated by sheer will – and if someone had once mastered materia born from the Lifestream, if they were more spirit than matter –

The single wing flared out like a banner and he figured he was dying anyway, taking a leap of faith over an icy cliff towards frozen ground couldn’t be worse than dying slowly and anticlimactically in the snow under a rock.

…

Seifer’s jaw was clenched as he stalked down a random corridor, didn’t matter which one, because after _everything_ Squall was still a cold, apathetic dick who made _absolutely no sense_ , and it was all his fault that Seifer nearly decked Fujin when she appeared from nowhere, grabbed his sleeve, and tugged him into a cabin. It was a small space that could barely cram in a woman and a bulky man with its hard little bunk.

“What the _hell_ , Fu.”

“ANGRY. WHY?”

“Because that little son of a bitch,” he started, trailing off with a frustrated noise when he couldn’t untangle the right words out of the thorny forest that was his mind. He ran a hand through his carefully gelled hair and didn’t notice.  Fujin didn’t say anything, just watched him with that fucking endless patience that could let her wait out a stone statue. Eventually he said, “I fucked up.”

She raised a brow as though asking, _Just once?_

“Before we left Garden.” He couldn’t help pacing as much as the small cabin would allow, attention flitting from the bunk to the door to a dent in the wall and definitely _not_ at Fujin. “Squall – _Leonhart_ and I were, y’know, sparring, nothing fancy, except I’d been irritating him all day and, uh.”

And he’d ended up tackling Squall bodily to the floor, started to laugh with victory when Squall suddenly got a foothold and threw him over, rolling with Seifer until he was straddling Seifer’s hips. It was a scene right out of Rinoa’s romance books, the ones Seifer didn’t secretly love himself: narrow hips under his hands, slim thighs flexing on either side of his torso, the same blue-grey eyes he always saw best over crossed blades narrowed with something other than _must kill Seifer_.

“SEX.”

“Don’t put too fine a point on it there, Fu.” Although, in retrospect, he would’ve expected Squall to cut off his own nuts before having sex _willingly_ with  _anyone,_ so what had changed? He wasn’t exactly Rinoa, who was earnest and affectionate and mischievous, who was perfectly charmed at being sneaked a simple red rose. If Seifer tried doing that with Squall, he’d end up with a second scar on his face.  Then again, it seemed like he didn’t know Squall as well as he’d thought, did he?

“LEONHART. TALK?”

“He basically told me to fuck right off in more words than I’ve ever heard from him.”

“EXPECTED?”

“Well, shit, Fu, I dunno, maybe a broken face? Hyne’s sake, I _tortured_ him, and I _liked_ it!”

“WORDS?”

“Does it matter what he actually said? His message was pretty fucking clear.”

She just stared at him with the eyes that a gargoyle wouldn’t be able to meet. Seifer scowled, would’ve walked away if he hadn’t already seen what happened when he didn’t listen to anyone’s advice.  “He won’t do a gods-damned thing. He says that if I think that’s what he wants then we’ve got nothing to talk about.”  Wow, Seifer hadn’t seen _that_ expression on Fujin since he and Rinoa had broken up and he’d gotten so drunk that he started coming up with increasingly improbable plans to woo her again.  “All right, if you’re going to give me the judging eyes then at least tell me _why_ – “

The violent rocking of the airship under his feet knocked his sentence right off its track and would’ve sent him crashing to his knees if he and Fujin hadn’t caught one another. An ear-splitting alarm started wailing.

“ _Now_ what?” he groaned, yanking open the cabin door and pelting off towards the bridge, Fujin close on his heels. The ship shuddered again just before he shouldered past Cloud and Vincent, burst open the door to the cockpit and started, “Quistis, what – “

“We’re being attacked!” she snarled, fingers flying over the controls. Outside, lightning cracked through blue sky when Zell and Raijin, bewildered but ready to punch something, appeared behind everyone else.

“By what?” Cloud demanded.

“I don’t know! Nothing’s showing up on – wait, what the hell? Is that a monster?”

Everyone braced themselves for a third violent buck of the ship, and at the same time both Cloud and Seifer cried out.  “Jenova,” Cloud growled, to which Seifer hissed, _“Again?”_

“Take the ship down,” Vincent told Quistis, “we cannot fight her in the air like this.”

Ears popped as altitude decreased. Seifer hissed again and fisted his hands in his hair, pulling harshly so that the clean, physical pain ate away at the overwhelming urge to _find her_.  Squall belatedly appeared, leaning heavily against the wall with his face drawn and pale. “Quistis, what’s going on?”

Zell answered, “Jenova’s back for round two,” and slipped an arm under Squall’s shoulders.  Squall made a tiny pained sound that Seifer could empathize with deeply and shook his head, muttering, “No, it’s…it’s Rinoa.”

“We probably would’ve been creamed if all those monsters hadn’t just up and died,” Seifer pointed out cynically, “how are we supposed to fight an alien-powered Sorceress the same day?”

Quistis’ lips were tightened into a thin line, eyes sharp and cold. “Squall, did you ever get that problem fixed?”

“No.”

“Shit,” she said eloquently over the sound of the ship’s landing gears deploying.

“Just be thankful Sephiroth isn’t here,” Cloud murmured, hand resting on his sword’s hilt.

“Hey, Squall, you still got Shiva?” Zell asked. Squall, after a suspiciously long pause, nodded and fought to stand on his own.

“Brace yourselves,” Quistis suddenly snapped, moments before _Ragnarok_ landed with a tremendous quake. Everyone scrambled for balance in the following few seconds of eerie silence.

“Welp,” said Zell cheerfully, “break a leg, people. But, y’know, don’t actually.”

...

_She didn't know where she was except that she could feel the distant warmth of the sun.  All she could see was poison-green woven mistily around her, trapping her in a net, pinning her down, and no matter how loudly she tried to scream and fight she couldn't break that suffocating net.  She couldn't reach the magic that always glowed like a tiny star in her chest even though she could feel it growing, moving, reaching without her permission for her Knight._

_But the worst part, worse than the utter lack of control, was that the dark, vicious satisfaction uncurling inside her wasn't entirely foreign, and the thought she could be capable of such cruelty, especially after she'd admitted how horrified she was by a mercenary's life -_ oh, Squall -

 _It was that, the memory of the heartbreak on Squall's normally expressionless face even though she knew this was better in the long run, that made Rinoa think,_ I'm not giving up.

...

Squall watched Cloud's back as they left the airship, Cloud's words from just that morning seemingly so long ago still ringing in his ears: _"You'll have to choose which is more important: pride, or survival."_

Cloud's broadsword was already in hand and ready for physics-defying action.  Lion Heart was still only halfway drawn by the time Squall saw Rinoa's twisted smile; her hair was the same silky shine, her body moving with the same dancer's grace, and even if the mind behind her eyes wasn't her own he honestly wasn't sure anymore if he'd be able to draw Lion Heart at all. 


	16. In Which Things Get a Little Hand-wavey

Squall couldn't help but be reminded of Irvine's old western movies: a line of tough-bitten cowboys, hands on weapons ready to draw at lightning speed, facing down the infamous outlaw that happened to also be a space alien.  _Ragnarok_ had gone down somewhere near Balamb, not far from the Fire Cavern, and Sunday's morning sun was already hot enough to feel like midsummer.  Squall and Cloud stood side-by-side as a wall of stoicism and old trauma against the only other person, only _lover_ , to whom Squall had dared open up like the innocent, inexperienced kid he'd been.  He was still Junctioned to Shiva, but there was a thin pane of something like glass separating them.  He had the uncomfortable hunch that the pane of something like glass came from Rinoa.

 _" **My children** ," _the Sorceress purred in a voice that rang in their ears, burrowed into their skulls.  _" **My misguided little** **ones**."_

Definitely not Rinoa.  Still, the thought of treating her like any other monster...

_" **Join with me and** \- "_

Cloud unceremoniously tossed a Firaga at her face and that solved that question.

Zell hung back and Squall could taste ozone in the back of his throat, that electric flavor heralding Quetzalcoatl.  Save-the-Queen snapped like a striking snake as Quistis channeled Ifrit's fire down its length.  For a breathless moment Squall hesitated, but then Seifer was hissing into his ear, "What's the matter, _Commander_ , has sitting behind a desk made you soft?"

Before Squall could elbow him in the eye, Jenova be damned, the ground under their feet trembled and broke and birthed what looked like tentacles, dear Hyne, _purple octopus tentacles._ Rinoa's mocking laugh was just a little too similar to Ultimecia's.

"Zell!" barked Squall, "Focus Quetzalcoatl on Jenova!  Fujin, Raijin, cover him!"

Fujin's chakram and Raijin's brute force did a number on the tentacles, spattering grossly green blood across grass and rock.  In the corner of his eye as he sprinted forward in Cloud's wake, Squall saw Vincent calmly taking off his clothes and folding them in a neat pile, and he reminded himself not to judge others for their lifestyle choices.

"Quistis, Seifer, take care of the tentacles closest to Rin - to Jenova!" he called, Lion Heart swinging.  Shiva was there, Junctioned but still cut off; instead it was Seifer at his side, Seifer's footsteps pounding in time with his own.  It was almost more surreal than the actual alien trying to kill them all.

Before any of them had gotten more than halfway to her, Jenova raised a slim hand and long spikes of ice shot towards them like arrows.  Squall ducked, one pinging off of Lion Heart.  A broad sweep of Ultima shattered several and bought Cloud just enough time to cast another fire spell that melted the next wave.  Jenova surrounded herself with bolts of ice and tentacles, utterly bizarre next to Rinoa's dirty old work clothes and messy, mundane braid.

A thunderous roar bellowed over the plain and a dark shape that could probably take on the _Ragnarok_ and win flew over their heads and dropped like a stone right on top of Jenova.  Dust and small stones blew back from the impact, catching in throats and other places that dust had no business in.  For a moment it seemed like the magic had been broken by a terrifyingly large demon, but when Squall lowered his arm from his face the demon was still clawing at the regenerating ice.  A tentacle thwacked the demon in the side with enough force to crush a T-rexaur, but the demon didn't seem to notice.

With Jenova distracted, Cloud was moving towards her so fast that Squall could barely track him, dodging spikes of ice like a pinball.

 _" **Failure** ,"_  Jenova purred in Rinoa's voice with that eerie, skull-digging double tone.  _" **You cannot kill your own mother**."_

Ultima slammed into the irregular, translucent shield of ice wrapped around Jenova and Cloud snarled, "We can damn well try."

_" **Child, puppet, are you not weary of pretending to be something you are not?** "_

Cloud somehow managed to look deeply unimpressed as he wrenched his blade through ice and the demon's shadow loomed large over him.  Behind them all, Quetzalcoatl shrieked piercingly.  Squall whirled around, nearly smashing into Seifer, and yelled, "Seifer, Quistis, cast the strongest Fire spells you have!"

"What - "

"Just do it!  Aim for the ice!"

They did, and the ice hissed and cracked, and Quetzalcoatl shrieked again and broke apart the darkened sky with a blinding shot of forked lightning.  It struck the ice melted by the fire and electricity raced up, arced over Rinoa's body and tore out a throat-shredding scream.  She might have been possessed by an alien but her body was still tiny and human; she crumpled to the ground, all of the ice and magic turning into a fine mist that dissipated harmlessly.

Squall hissed and put a hand to his temple when pain lanced through his temple, still staring at Rinoa's pitiful form.  Seifer muttered, "Sucks, doesn't it?  You thought getting kicked in the nuts was bad, wait 'til the first time she gets cramps."

"Squall, we need to strike _now!"_ Quistis yelled, dashing forward and leaping nimbly over the tentacles that had slumped and gone still.  Squall flinched before straightening back up and chasing after Quistis, bracing himself for a killing blow -

\- and Lion Heart was clashing loudly with Ultima, ringing out clear as a bell and jarring Squall's whole upper body.  The blue glow of Lion Heart's blade was dulled by the brilliant green shine of Cloud's eyes around cat-slit pupils.

 _"Mother,"_ Cloud started, and suddenly jerked himself back several steps before falling to his knees, Ultima dropping from his fingers as he clutched at his head.  The giant black demon was circling back around in the sky before crashing down beside Cloud, forcing Squall and the others to scuttle out of the way.  It roared and pointedly put one clawed foot firmly over Ultima where even someone with Cloud's strength wouldn't be able to lift it.

A green glow too alike to the one in Cloud's eyes seemed to be coming through the small cracks in the ground under Jenova's feet.  Squall twisted around and past the demonic thing, Seifer close on his heels, Zell still concentrating on holding Quetzalcoatl, Quistis just a few arms' lengths ahead.  Cloud had only stopped Squall for a few seconds, leaving just enough time for Save-the-Queen and Lion Heart to come down on Rinoa and slam into a new barrier inches from Rinoa's chest.

"Damn it," Zell growled, unable to fight while a Guardian was hanging around but unable to _use_ said Guardian when everyone was standing so close to the target.  The remaining tentacles shivered and raised themselves back up despite Fujin's chakram and Raijin's fists.

 _" **You are imperfect,** "_ Jenova said with patronizing gentleness layered thickly over rasping anger.  She wasn't standing quite so straight and confident, an arm pressed tightly, instinctively, against her own belly.   _" **You will fail, but a mother always forgives her children.** "_

The gunblades and whip glanced off the magic barrier.  Seifer stumbled, looking dazed when Squall hadn't seen him get hit by anything, face somehow as grey as someone who had managed to overdo the magic casting.

Maybe it was the fact that everyone was trying to kill her instead of worship her, maybe it was Zell finally dismissing Quetzalcoatl so he could bring his shiny new Ehrgeiz gloves to the fray, maybe it was the giant black demon turning back into Vincent - nice to know there'd been a reason for the nakedness - who then stood over Cloud's groaning body like he wasn't sure if he was protecting or threatening Cloud, but Jenova finally shrieked, _" **Enough!** "_

The world may not have literally quaked, but damned if it didn't try.  All the magic she'd wrapped around herself just dropped, making ears pop, disorienting enough that there wasn't any time to take advantage of it before all but three of Jenova's purple octopus tentacles were sucked back into the ground.  Of those three, two lashed forward and swooped back in opposite directions, knocking people aside and leaving part of the battlefield clear enough for the third one to fly straight down towards Squall.

And Squall - deprived of sleep, fighting for a total of too many hours, not long woken from unconsciousness nor the most emotionally stable for the moment - might've still been able to dodge the fucking thing if he hadn't met Jenova's gaze through Rinoa's (green, green) eyes.

_("I love you," she said, but words like that should never sound so sad.)_

...

"Seventy-six bottles of beer on the wall, seventy-six bottles of beer!  Take one down, pass it around, seventy-five bottles of beer on the wall!"

"Selphie, love," said Irvine through gritted teeth, "while song is often a great way to pass the time, perhaps now is not one of those times."

They'd been walking with no way to tell how much time had passed, no way to know where they were going, and no way to know where to find their weapons.  They felt no hungrier than they had in the train station and Selphie's wounds remained neither better nor worse.  Irvine was starting to wonder if they were just walking in place on a giant treadmill.

Selphie's laugh was strained and some length of time, minutes or hours, passed in silence.  "When we get back to Garden," she said suddenly, "I'm going to throw the biggest damn festival in the history of festivals."

"There'll be a marksmanship contest, of course," Irvine volunteered.

"And a beauty contest for weaponry.  Points off for any blemishes in the steel.  And if the others manage to find Seifer, I'll blackmail Squall into a gunblade show with him."

"What on earth do you have to blackmail him?"

Selphie smiled slyly and Irvine made a mental note to clean out the space under his own mattress.  He put an arm around her shoulders where his long coat still hung off of her.  "When we get back to Garden," he said, "I'll help you throw a festival so fabulous that we'll get arrested and everyone will be talking about it for years to come."

"I don't suppose you'd have room for another volunteer, would you?"

Irvine and Selphie both whipped around, reaching for weapons that weren't there.  The young woman in a pink dress and a wide grin, standing out so brightly in the gloomy cavern, hadn't made a single sound, which was rather terrifying in a place with no hiding places whatsoever.   "Who are you?" Irvine demanded.

"My name is Aeris," she said amiably.  She held a well-used staff in one hand, but there no sign of it being a threat.  "I'm...well, that's kind of complicated, but I thought I'd give you guys a hand."

Irvine blinked slowly.  "No offense, darlin', but where the _hell_ did you come from?"

"The Lifestream, kind of.  Um, let's keep going, we can chat while we walk."  As she drew level with the SeeDs, her cheerfulness was undercut by the lines creasing the corners of eyes that looked a little too green to be normal.

"What are you _really?"_ asked Selphie suspiciously as they started walking together.

"My name really is Aeris," she explained, "but I'm also a Cetra.  Er, Centra?"

"You're a _Centra?"_ Irvine repeated incredulously, but she just smiled again, nodded, said, "It's how I found you guys here.  You wouldn't be able to get out of here without some help."

That was the moment Irvine realized the black-glass-whatever of the endless cavern was getting brighter, turning pale and blueish and replacing the creepy silence with gentle hushes that sounded an awful lot like the wind in trees and the lazy lapping of water.

"Didn't see that one coming," Selphie said casually as they stopped at the edge of a small lake, facing what looked like the shell of some horrifyingly large sea creature and surrounded by a thick forest of glowing white trees.

"Welcome to the Forest of the Ancients," said Aeris.

"Huh," Irvine managed.

"It doesn't exist in your time anymore," she murmured a little sadly.  "All that's left are the Centra ruins."

Selphie dragged her eyes off the pretty landscape to look at Aeris.  "What do you mean, 'in our time'?"

"Cloud's a good friend of mine, but I kind of...checked out of the game early."

"How?" asked Irvine.

"I died."

"Awkward," Selphie muttered.

"So you've just been hanging around this whole time?"

"Pretty much."

"So, Ms. Centra," Selphie interrupted, "what's going on?  Why haven't I bled to death?  Where did our weapons go?  We worked hard to upgrade those things, y'know.  Will we get back in time for the festival?"

Aeris had a lovely laugh.  "I don't know about the festival, but it helps that this place is sort of, like, a time out of time?  Like the Time Compression.  There's no one here to use it, so the time collects here and gets all muddled.  Jenova's been using this place to hide from the Centra somehow, it's all very hand-wavey, but she basically brought you two here in case she figured out a use for you."

"Like what?" Irvine asked cautiously.

"Turning you into mindless slaves willing to kill your friends is kind of her thing."

In the ensuing silence, Selphie repeated, "Awkward."

"So, can you get us out of here?"

"Um.  Maybe?"

So much for the rescue operation.

...

 Xu was sitting at the headmistress' desk, sorting through reports on Trabia Garden's reconstruction and not being anxious, this was her _not being anxious._ When the vid-phone rang, she practically lunged across the desk to answer it and nearly knocked it on the floor. "It's been _two days_ with no report and I - _Quistis, what the hell happened?"_

Quistis' eyes were ringed with exhaustion and there was blood matting the hair at one temple.  _"Xu,"_ she rushed out, _"we need transport._ Ragnarok's _taken damage and we need medical help._ _We're near the Fire Cavern, it's not that far, I'm sending you the coordinates now - "_

"Transport getting prepared, ready on your signal."  Xu typed out the command and emailed it to every person ever, including Kadowaki and possibly Cid, wherever that old man had fucked off to.  "Casualties?"

_"No dead, at least none I know about, but honestly I'm not sure how to explain what - Xu, Squall's gone."_

"What?"

_"Jenova took him."_

...

There were voices on the wind in the mountains.  Sometimes one of them was Cloud's, when he laughed brightly at finding some amazing new thing in the forests or when he cried under the other kids' fists.  He didn't know where the other voices came from, the ones he only heard when he was alone and far away from the village, but if he was still and quiet Cloud swore he could almost make out words.  Maybe they were from ancient warriors who once hunted dragons in the ruthlessly cold mountains, or maybe from the old and dead gods whose names his mother sometimes muttered to herself as she flitted around the kitchen, or maybe from all the monsters people said lived under the ShinRa mansion.

Later, older but not much wiser, Cloud realized the voices came from the Lifestream, which flowed naturally closer to the surface near Nibelheim, and the mako permeating the area around the reactor amplified what was always there, dragon slayers or otherwise.  When he learned that Jenova had been kept deep under the ground there, he wondered if the reason he had always been so utterly irrational when it came to Sephiroth was because he'd been hearing her whisper for years before ever arriving Midgar.

He was so _tired_.

He slept, and he wasn't alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I seriously had to cut almost half the original chapter because it was _just that bad_.


	17. In Which Sephiroth Gets New Threads and Fakes Amnesia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm trying to combine different POV sections so it doesn't keep switching _so much_ without having to completely rewrite basically everything, but it doesn't always happen easily. Just...bear with me.

 

The town was small and reminded Sephiroth uncomfortably of Nibelheim. Snow lay thick and heavy over steeply-slanted roofs and beside doorways, piling up against thick wooden walls, and in the distance rose a long row of toothy, jagged mountains threatening to bite apart the grey sky. No one walked the single wide street that meandered through the village, evidently preferring to stay by the fires that flickered warmly through double-paned windows, and no one saw the naked man strolling into town.

Sephiroth's limbs, meanwhile, had finally gone numb, frost edging his black feathers. When he saw the hanging wooden sign of a small inn, he considered how to justify walking naked in the snow: a mugging? A monster attack that had somehow lost him all his clothes? An avalanche that had left him stranded in a small ramshackle cabin in the middle of nowhere with no one to share body heat? Should he imperiously draw himself up and simply stare intensely until someone did his bidding?

The inn's wooden door was heavy and dark with age. Sephiroth pushed it open and walked in, head barely clearing the doorway, and realized that the inn was two-thirds full of patrons who all turned to look.

"I would like to inquire about a room and a change of clothes," Sephiroth announced calmly in the awkward silence.

"Well, don't just stand there," someone, likely the innkeeper, barked at a young woman in an apron, and she hustled forward with a deep blush and a squeaky, "Um, right this way, sir, we, uh, have some rooms still available, so, yeah."

"Thank you," Sephiroth replied politely, and held his head high as he followed the barmaid up the narrow stairs. Behind him he heard the innkeeper yelling, "Yo, Frankie, you got any spare threads?" and automatically glanced over his shoulder.

"Ya, I'll see what I've got," said a tall, burly man that got up from the bar and lumbered out the door.

The room was small but clean, a thick quilt covering the wood-framed bed, and Sephiroth was suddenly reminded of another place, warm and cozy and something like home before it was consumed by fire.

The sharp click of a firestarter made Sephiroth's heart thump hard against his ribs. He twitched and turned to find the barmaid kneeling on the floor in front of a small fireplace getting the flames started. At least it'd get rid of the frost on the damn feathers.

"So, um, where are you from?" she asked shyly.

"Midgar."

"Midgar? I've never heard of it. Where is it?"

That someone could not know about a city that was essentially the capital of the entire world was...slightly unexpected. "It's...south from here."

"Most places are, really," said the barmaid. She stood up and brushed her hands together to get rid of the soot.

"What year is it?"

She blinked at him. "Are you an amnesiac? Were you just in an accident that also took your clothes?"

Sephiroth was about to say 'no' before pausing. "Ah, yes. It was...a spell gone wrong."

"Are you a SeeD?"

Fifty-fifty chance of saying the wrong thing and possibly getting kicked out naked in the snow; one never knew what subjects would offend someone's politics. "...No?"

"I guess you wouldn't remember, what with the amnesia," she said wisely, and launched into a monologue on SeeDs and Gardens and Sorceresses and a whole world of political conflict that was completely unfamiliar. During her monologue, the door opened and the innkeeper appeared with a pile of clothes that he dumped into Sephiroth's arms.

"Thank you," Sephiroth told him, "and please thank Frankie for me."

 "Those're his Sunday best, you know," the innkeeper said as Sephiroth unselfconsciously pulled on the clothes.  It seemed that Frankie's Sunday best were as generous as their owner, given how the shirt fell too loosely around his belly and only a thin black belt kept the trousers from sliding right off his hips.

Eventually the barmaid and the innkeeper went back downstairs and left Sephiroth alone with the crackling of the fire and a warm stillness settled over the room.  Besides the bed, there was a window looking out over the snow, an aged bedside table with a lamp, a low dresser with two large drawers.  He stood in the middle of the room for several long minutes, unmoving, before finally padding over to the bed and sitting on the edge of the soft mattress.  The stillness remained, and it left too much room for other things to crawl in and fill it, for the soft heartbeat beneath his own to drum its own rhythm and for the whispers of _what have I done_ to twine along the walls and curl in the corners of the room.  He looked down at his bare, unmarked hands and was irrationally surprised that they weren't streaked with ash or blood.

The sun never completely set; it remained a deep, reddish glow on the horizon, casting weird shadows over the dips and dunes of the snowfield.  Sephiroth sat on the bed with his back against the headboard, staring sightlessly out of the window, unaware of the moment he slipped into a restless sleep where the shadows flickered like flames and the cold wind tasted of smoke.  It was only a few hours before dawn when the steady heartbeat suddenly began racing and filling Sephiroth's head with screams, pushing him mindlessly down the stairs, out of the inn, and into flight before he had time to think, _Wait, what?_

...

The transport truck rattled uncomfortably over the terrain, worsening the headache already pounding away at Quistis' skull. She was on the radio with Xu and reporting what had happened since her last communication from Dollet as she watched the medical personnel flutter around.

Seifer lay unconscious on the floor on top of several folded blankets, hovered over by Fujin and Raijin. Fujin was gingerly holding her arm close to her body, ignoring the pain caused by her chakram being forcibly torn from her grip by Jenova, and several welts on Raijin's body were bleeding profusely.  Zell was stretched between Seifer and the place where Quistis leaned against the wall of the cargo hold, only halfway conscious as the medics worked on him. When he coughed, blood welled up worryingly behind his lips, but he still managed a hazy grin for Quistis and a roll of the eyes at the medics.

Vincent stayed close to Cloud, who was retching violently in a corner. Bile came up with some toxic-looking, glowing green substance.

"Jenova caught us unprepared," she sighed to Xu through the radio. A nurse tried to clean away the blood on her temple but Quistis waved her away impatiently.  "Dollet was _crawling_ with monsters and we hardly had a chance to rest before she showed up."

Quistis could clearly imagine the impressive scowl that would be creasing Xu's face. _"Didn't you say that Cloud and this Vincent had fought her before?"_ the Headmistress demanded. _"Why couldn't they stop her?"_

"They were probably just as tired as the rest of us," Quistis snapped, then paused to take a calm breath. "And Cloud—" she paused and changed her mind mid-sentence, "—was wounded in the first battle."

Quistis had seen him interfere with Squall's blow that would've at least seriously maimed the Sorceress, which would've gotten him court-martialed at the very _least_ if he'd been a SeeD,  but she decided to keep that little fact to herself for a while, give him the benefit of the doubt until he stop retching up that glowing green substance long enough to hold a halfway-coherent conversation.

A sudden commotion near the vehicle's rear doors drew her attention. Wide-eyed, Cloud had a hand fisted in Vincent's cloak, his voice cracking over the ominous words, "He's coming."

When the truck pulled into Garden's garage and the fighters were moved gently but quickly into the infirmary, Cloud had joined Seifer and Zell in unconsciousness. Fujin, Raijin, Quistis, and Vincent were ushered into another room where Kadowaki's medical assistants sat them down on clean beds with the instruction to _stay put or so help me, I will_ find _a way..._

Quistis looked at the others with the one eye that wasn't covered by a bandage and said, "This is my fault."

"IMPOSSIBLE," Fujin snorted as Vincent raised an eyebrow and replied mildly, "I'd be interested to know how that could possibly be true."

"I should've convinced Squall to stay another day in Dollet, or -- "

"No one can make Leonhart do anything he doesn't want to, yanno," Raijin pointed out quite truthfully, but Quistis couldn't help adding, "Except Rinoa, apparently."

"A reasonable person would classify a space alien as extenuating circumstances," Vincent said dryly.  "Don't allow Jenova to get into your head."

"So to speak," Quistis said with a half-smile, and would've continued if it hadn't been for the blood-curdling scream that rang through the infirmary.  Vincent was the first on his feet, moving with inhuman speed towards one of the private rooms and throwing open the door.

It was Cloud -- probably at his most expressive that Quistis had ever seen him, which, oh dear, was kind of an asshole thought right now -- and he was seizing, back arched so far she thought his spine might snap as he let out another horrible keen. Kadowaki hovered as close as she dared near flailing, inhumanly-strong limbs.

"Back away," Vincent ordered sharply, and pushed past her, ducked a fist and kneeled on the floor near the head of the bed.  "Cloud," he said firmly, and Cloud opened his eyes, and they were no longer blue but that horrible green, "listen to me, Cloud. You are safe. Cloud. Stand down."

Vincent was careful not to touch Cloud or try to hold him down.  Quistis looked away out of respect. 

"Your name is Cloud Strife. Cloud, _you are safe_." 

It took a while for Cloud's body to relax.  His eyes were slitted open, twin cracks of bright blue, but he didn't acknowledge any of the people standing awkwardly around his bedside.  Kadowaki looked at Vincent, who hesitated before giving her a sharp nod, and she tentatively reached out to press her fingers against the hollow of Cloud's throat.

"His pulse is accelerated, but steady.  What just happened?"

"It may have been Jenova's proximity.  The foreign cells in his body were unable to reunite with the original host."  Vincent looked as uncomfortable as it was possible for a blank slate to be.  Quistis wondered if he was speaking truthfully or just pulling it out of his ass.

"SEIFER?" Fujin interjected, reflexively glancing out the open door as though she'd be able to see around the corner into Seifer's own small room.

"Physically, he's exhausted and banged up," Kadowaki answered absently as she cast Scan over Cloud.  "Two days of fighting with little rest is hardly healthy, even for people who seem to believe they're as resilient as their GFs."

Quistis was glad to see she wasn't the only SeeD who winced like a naughty child.

"And before you ask," Kadowaki continued, "Zell will live, though he may regret that when he wakes up.  He has some cracked ribs, but it's nothing that a Cure can't fix."

Quistis suspected that Kadowaki hadn't used Cure yet to make a point about things like reasonable human limitations and the value of a sense of self-preservation.

...

Shiva knelt over Squall like an unusually attractive gargoyle, tilting her head curiously as she looked him over.  There was a scrape along his right cheek from the narrow miss of an icicle, a few tears here and there in his clothing, and the gaping, bloodied hole in his side.  She reached out to press translucent fingers against the torn muscle but couldn't, unable to take that last step towards being corporeal without Squall's conscious help.  Something was _gone_ , stolen, leaving a gaping emptiness between her and the space she'd carved for herself inside of him.  The most she could do was inspire a growing spiderweb of frost along the grass and along the edges of Squall's body, oh, how _infuriating_.

 ** _"Leave,"_ ** said Jenova from a tangled nest of tentacles grasping along the contours of an enormous, building-sized seashell.  Rinoa's body was as limp as a very fresh corpse, her moving lips pale and bloodless, as some of those tentacles crawled along the lakeshore and across the grass towards Squall.

 _You take what isn't yours to have_.

**_"I will destroy_ _you."_**

_Better creatures than you have tried._

Shiva couldn't do anything but watch as those blindly seeking tentacles stretched over and under Squall's body like giant maggots, his head lolling limply as they dragged him slowly back towards Jenova's disgusting mass.  Shiva thought of the kind of storms that could crack mountains, the wintry snaps that broke pipes and shattered steel and killed hundreds or thousands.

 ** _"Leave before I lose my patience,"_ ** Jenova hissed.

 _Such empty threats_ , Shiva murmured.  _Wounded by your own sons.  How selfish children can be._

_**"They will realize their mistake before the** **end."** _

_You underestimate humans, Calamity.  It will be your downfall_.

Jenova hissed again and curled Rinoa's body around Squall's in the gross parody of a loving embrace.

...

Irvine looked at Aeris and debated the odds of successfully getting Selphie away from the crazy person.

"If you don't know what to do, what're we going to do?" Selphie demanded, and Aeris started, "Um, I think," before stopping and whipping her head around, hands tightening around her staff.  "She's here," she said flatly, suddenly distant as an echo.  "Selphie, Irvine, Jenova can't possess you, just do -- "

"Grievous bodily harm?" Irvine supplied, automatically cocking Exeter.  He and Selphie followed Aeris' gaze to the shore on the other side of the lake but didn't immediately see anything beyond a huge freaking seashell.

" -- grievous bodily harm and whatever else she can think of.  Be careful."

 _"Squall?"_ Selphie suddenly all but shrieked, then nearly shrieked again when Irvine clamped a hand over her mouth and said into her ear, "Keep it down, darlin', we don't want to get her attention before we know the sitrep."

It took a few seconds for Irvine to pick out the tentacles writhing around the opening of the seashell and the two bodies entwined in the thick of them, the blood spattering Squall's, and then muttered, "Oh, that's just not right."

Aeris' wrinkled nose and creased forehead apparently agreed.

"Where's everyone else?  Where's Cloud?" Selphie whispered.

"At least we found who we were looking for," Irvine cracked.

...

 


	18. In Which Head Damage Inspires Weird Dreams

 

"So, what've you got for me?"

Quistis crossed her legs and leaned back in the commander's office chair, arms draped over its rests and no nonsense in her stare.  There wasn't any sign that it was the evening of the day after they'd returned to Dollet with one person MIA and three men down for the count.

 _"Ward just sent over a bunch of reports,"_ Laguna said as he restlessly shuffled a stack of paper lying in front of him.  _"He was on his way back with some of our scientists up north, but when they heard about Dollet they took a detour there.  There was enough left over for them to get some good samples.  At least, I think that's what this is saying?"_ He held up the stack of papers, turned it sideways, then back upright, then set them down again with a huff.  _"Anyway, I'll get these sent over to you as soon as possible."_

"Thank you, Laguna, I would appreciate that.  We ran some Scans while we were there, so I'll send that information to you, too."

 _"Some of the scientists said that whatever went down in Dollet was basically wholesale slaughter_. _"_

"Nothing that SeeD isn't trained to handle," she replied easily.

_"Where's Squall?  Is everything all right?"_

She hesitated, torn between dealing with Laguna's sense of overcompensation for not being there most of Squall's life and the fact that he was the president of a nation with significant resources.  "He's MIA."

_"What?  How?_

 "Jenova took him."

He paled so quickly she half-expected him to faint.  _"How did_ that _happen?  I mean, Cloud - "_

"None of us were prepared to face her so soon, Laguna, especially after all the fighting in Dollet."  After two days of fighting then not-fighting but still worrying and then fighting again and then  _panicking_ , eleven hours of sleep in the infirmary hadn't felt much like sleep at all.  Laguna could go _fuck right off_.  "He isn't dead yet, Laguna.  If Jenova wanted him dead, she wouldn't have bothered taking him."

 _"You want my help,"_ Laguna caught on. 

Quistis smiled tightly.  "We won't be able to find him on our own, and we're trying to keep this from getting out to too many people and causing a panic."

Laguna didn't say anything at first and Quistis wondered, incredulous, if the man was seriously considering saying 'no,' and thank Hyne Squall wasn't around to see this.  "We can replace a commander," she said softly, "but can you replace your only son?"

_"Why shouldn't I go find him on my own?  SeeD isn't a rescue operation."_

"If you have people at your beck and call capable of taking down a Sorceress with no previous experience whatsoever, then you're welcome to try."

_"This would be easier if there was an alliance between our institutions."_

Quistis had had a difficult few days.  Her head ached, her hands were blistered from Save-the-Queen, and Laguna was really fucking annoying, so she couldn't be blamed for suddenly leaning forward and slamming her fist on the table near the vid-phone.  He jumped, and she tasted satisfaction.  "Mr. President," she said lowly, "do you realize why Squall will never, ever sign away Balamb Garden like that?"

_"It's hardly 'signing away' - "_

"Two reasons," Quistis spoke over him.  "One, SeeD is an institution designed to function as a mercenary force and, when relevant, as a trained response team for Sorceresses - which, may I remind you, has been relevant before and is _relevant again_.  Surrendering Balamb Garden's autonomy means turning it into Esthar's private military, violating both its founding purpose and hamstringing its ability to be prepared for the very real reality of Sorceresses."

_"And in times of peace?  You're a tool for war, Instructor.  Not peace."_

"We've managed so far, haven't we?" she couldn't help sniping.  "And that other reason, Laguna, is because an alliance would _kill_ Squall."

_"It's not a death sentence, it's rather the opposite."_

"Is it, though?  When Balamb Garden would be subject to a bureaucracy that evolved in a long period of isolationism and hasn't truly had to worry about security, let alone a war, for nearly as long?  SeeD is freedom, Laguna, the freedom to choose our present and our future and never regret the past because we know our mistakes were our own.  If you would take that away from Squall, then you're no father at all."  And she criticized _Squall_ for not being diplomatic.

  _"...What information do you need, then?"_

It was a struggle not to throw a victorious fist in the air.  Be cool, _be cool_.  "Anything you can find out about the Lifestream.  If it's important to Jenova's plans, we need to know as much as we can.  Also, anything about 'materia' and mako.'"

Laguna signed off not long after that.  Quistis turned off the vid-phone and slumped back into the chair with a sigh.

"That was well done."

The gun in the right-hand drawer of Squall's desk was in her hand and cocked before she realized who was leaning in the doorway of the office.  "Vincent," she said calmly, because pointing firearms at allies was no big deal, "I didn't see you there.  Is there anything I can do for you?"

"When President Loire sends you whatever information he finds, I would like to see it as well."  He spoke mildly, almost pleasantly, and somehow it still managed to sound creepy, which made her wonder if putting the gun back in the drawer was really a good idea, although maybe that was just the memory of the _giant black demon_.

"Do those terms mean anything to you?"

"Perhaps," he replied, frustratingly vague. 

Quistis was never going to play poker with him.  "All right," she agreed anyway, getting to her feet.  "In the meantime, I was going to grab a cup of coffee and try to put off an exhausted meltdown for a while longer.  Care to join me?"

She was already brushing past him and setting off down the hall when she heard his demure, "As you wish," and sensed him following her like her own private gargoyle.

...

_Seifer stood, naked and alone, on a small, raised dais as people in white lab coats flitted around, asking questions and writing on clipboards.  He replied mechanically, used to the routine that always followed a mako shower; he'd had plenty of them in his seven short years.  
_

_"Perfect," Hojo hummed, hands clasped behind his back and ignoring the assistants, staring hard at Seifer.  "You're exceeding all my expectations already, Sephiroth."_

__Seifer just blinked slowly in return and wondered when he'd be allowed to return to his quarters.  One of the Turks had said he'd help Seifer with one of his sword routines.  
_ _

_..._

Squall dreamed of flowers and rain and an unending white horizon; he dreamed of an orphanage beside the ocean, a lighthouse perched on a distant pinnacle of rock; he dreamed of a young woman with sad eyes, walking away from the orphanage and a little boy in a yellow shirt standing in the rain.

 Someone said, _People think war and death are the two worst things we can experience.  T_ _hey're wrong. The worst thing is the silence that comes after._   Someone said, _What exactly happened during the Time Compression? It's like you left part of yourself behind_.  Someone said, _This doesn't make us BFFs, Puberty Boy_.

This place wasn't familiar, wasn't snow and icy wind.  This place was faded photographs and well-worn letters, old bruises and dried tears and the shape of loneliness in the rain.  It was the empty person-shaped space at his side, Squall thought, he _thought_ and it hurt to do so, he wanted to run but no one can outrun himself except in circles.  People were like circles too, he thought and thought, they were there and then they weren't and then they were there again except when they weren't, _except when Seifer left and he never came back_.

 _ **"It's all right,**_ **Squall,"** Rinoa said.  She wrapped her many, many arms around him and held him tightly.

...

_Seifer sat in the corner of the living room, holding a stuffed chocobo with a deathly grip.  The fireplace warmed up the room, fighting off the chill of a rainy day, but Seifer could still feel the rain running in cold streams through his hair and _soaking through his yellow shirt.  Matron sat in her armchair watching over the other kids, Selphie stealing Irvine's hat and Irvine chasing after her, Quistis impatiently trying to teach Zell how to spell with the letter-blocks while another blond boy meanly mixed them all up.__

__But there was someone missing, someone with a kind smile and who never treated him like a little kid, and it made his stomach twist up all funny.  It__ hurt, _like he was going to be sick and have to lie in bed for hours because Matron said it was supposed to make him feel better somehow.  But he'd tried that - wrapped himself up like a burrito and pretended the rest of the world didn't exist, and all that happened was the ache in belly deepening until he felt hollow._ _  
_

_So Seifer watched from the corner as the other kids played and decided that if his big sister leaving hurt this badly, he would never give anyone else the chance to make him feel this way again_.

...

The day after their return to Garden, Zell woke up first.  He stared up in confusion at the ceiling until he realized it belonged to the infirmary, then let out a heartfelt groan and threw an arm over his face weakly. 

"How are you feeling, Zell?" Dr. Kadowaki asked kindly.

"I think I've finally made the impression of my body on this mattress permanent," he replied into his arm.  "You might as well just put my name on it."

"The quartermaster said he'd have the plaque ready by tomorrow."

Zell moved his arm and squinted up at her with a suspicious, "Wait, seriously?"

"Yes."

"No," Quistis sighed, "just hold still while Dr. Kadowaki makes sure you haven't lost what little remains of your brain."

"That's cold, Trepe."

Quistis breathed a silent sigh of relief when Zell was released with a clean bill of health and an empty _take it easy for once in your career, for Hyne's sake_.

It had taken some wheedling, but Quistis convinced Xu to allow Fujin and Raijin to take over a few of the basic classes while everyone recovered and they waited on Laguna to get back to them with, hopefully, some helpful information.  After the first period, students were already complaining about how _horrible_ and _difficult_ Fujin was, and since the students had obviously gotten lazy in her absence, she gave them extra practice sessions and a copy of a pop quiz to Fujin.  Purely for their own benefit, of course.

Vincent split his time between sitting at Cloud's bedside, watching him sleep, and then helping Quistis sort through the information once Esthar's historians and researchers started sending it over in the commander's office.  He was quiet and efficient, learning to navigate unfamiliar technology with admirable speed and an unfair ability to retain knowledge like it was going out of style.  One benefit to Esthar's isolationism was the sheer amount of history it had meticulously recorded – probably, the cynical voice in Quistis' head whispered, to justify that isolationism in the first place.  Apparently Esthar was the hundreds-of-years distant descendant of a _power company_ , of all things, the source of advanced technology and a significant amount of human suffering.  "Yes," Vincent had said when Quistis was skimming back through the years, "I imagine ShinRa's time will be the most useful."

So, mako was basically liquid magic that also kept the planet alive, at least when it wasn't being piped into electric lights, televisions, or people.  "Wait, they put this stuff in _people?"_

"Ethics was in somewhat shorter supply at the time."

"Were you and Cloud these SOLDIERs?"

"No."

Quistis waited for him to explain.  When he remained silent, she stared at him until he finally muttered, "Cloud may as well have been.  The addition of dead Jenova cells to the SOLDIER procedure was standard, but Cloud was one of the few who were given live ones."

"How is her influence physical _and_ mental?"

"Living cells act as a kind of...radio tower," Vincent with a pained expression, probably at comparing a horrific procedure to pop media.  "The mako enhances the, ah, signal."

So, a kind of virus that could lay dormant for however long it needs to until there's enough mako to 'wake it up' with Jenova's will itself as a catalyst.  Quistis was no doctor, but that sounded...dubious.  "And Squall and Seifer?"

"Whatever process makes them Knights must parallel the process that created Sephiroth and changed Cloud to make them susceptible to Jenova."

That sounded...also pretty dubious.  "Is there a way of reversing it?"

"You can try killing the host."

"A way that _doesn't_ involve killing the host?" she asked dryly.

"Ah," Vincent said vaguely, "Laguna has sent the next batch of files.  I will start on them while you finished these."

_"Vincent."_

"...I would advise you to always expect the worse, just in case."

...

Seifer was the next to wake up.  He said, "Fuck," and then, "Shit," and finally, "Wow, I didn't miss this place at all."

He was alone in the small room, which was lit by a late afternoon sun, and the infirmary behind the closed door sounded silent.  His hand wandered up to his face and found an old scar crossing his nose and between his brows, no spiky yellow hair in his face, no long silver locks to get tangled up.  Sitting up was an interesting experience in lightheaded disorientation, and when the thin, bleached-white blanket slid down around his waist, the cool air raised goosebumps on bare skin.  He was, thankfully, still wearing pants.

When the world stopped tilting, Seifer slid gingerly to his feet on cold tile and shuffled towards the door.  Carefully pushing it open didn't bring down Kadowaki's wrath, so he continued shuffling down the short hallway that led to the waiting room.  He paused at the door to the room beside his own, however, not entirely sure why but, after hesitating briefly, opening it anyway to peer inside and finding Cloud dead to the world.  _His_ sword wasn't in the room, either.  Seifer thought of cheerful glowing eyes and the kind of loud, happy laughter that usually led to cherry bombs in water pipes, and he had to admit that the jealousy that followed was all his own.

 _Not real_ , he repeated to himself as he closed the door again and kept shuffling on embarrassingly slowly.  _Not real_.

 _...But_ that _is_ , he sighed when he nearly stumbled over Zell sitting in the waiting room.  Zell squawked with surprise – Hyne, where was Seifer's energy in such a prime opportunity for mockery – and demanded, "Seifer, when the hell did you wake up?"

"About five minutes ago.  Where're Fujin and Raijin?"

"Um, teaching, believe it or not, I'm not sure what Quistis was thinking there."

Seifer had had no idea that Fujin was capable of teaching cadets without the class ending in bloodshed, but when he thought about her impatient patience in Dollet, helping him move around and eat and basically function on a minimal level, he figured he wasn't giving her enough credit.  "What's going on?  Has Squall gone crazy yet?"

Zell flinched, which made Seifer want to flinch, and he _never_ wanted to flinch.  "What the fuck happened?"

"Jenova, what else?"  Zell slumped in his chair, suddenly looking like the kind of tired that couldn't be fixed with a good night's sleep.  "She's got him.  Quistis and Vincent are going through what little we know about Jenova and Sorceresses and whatnot to see what we should do next."  He swallowed with a little difficulty.  "Still haven't found Selphie or Irvine."

Seifer wondered if Kadowaki would mind if he laid down and went to sleep in the middle of the waiting room.

"You want me to call Fujin and Raijin?" Zell offered, so unexpected that Seifer couldn't help giving him the hairy eyeball.

"Sure," he said slowly, and lurched into a chair as Zell got up to fiddle with the phone on the wall.  Things went a bit fuzzy for a little while until he felt small hands on his cheeks, tilting his face up to the light and one red eye.  Raijin's shadow loomed reassuringly behind her.

"What's this I hear about you teaching?" he managed past a dry throat.

"STUPID," she replied fondly.  "REST."

"You know how I feel about bleached hospital blankets cramping my style."

"We got a dorm, yanno," Raijin chimed in, because Raijin and Fujin's second-favorite past-time was ganging up on a poor, misunderstood Seifer.  Raijin smirked, which looked weird on his puppy face, and said, "No, it's our first-favorite past-time," because apparently even Seifer's mouth wasn't listening to him.  Seifer gave Raijin his own hairy eyeball and allowed Fujin to tug him none-too-gently to his feet and push him in the direction of the infirmary entrance.  He managed catch a glimpse of Zell, who had silent this whole time, and the oddly thoughtful expression on Zell's face.

...

 Cloud dreamed, and in his dream was a pair of thin, strong arms that wrapped around his shoulders from behind with the quiet scent of flowers.  "Aeris," he murmured, and felt a forehead press against his spine between his shoulderblades.

"You always doubt yourself," she said into his back.  "Even when you haven't done anything wrong."

He reached up a hand and laid it over one of hers, holding her palm close to his chest.  She said, "If you were given a choice, Cloud, what would you choose?"

Choosing death would feel like a betrayal to all the promises he'd made.  Choosing life was almost as terrible a thought.  He opened his mouth, realized he had no idea what to say, and closed it again.

"Come with me, Cloud," she whispered.  "You've sacrificed so much.  You can rest now."

"But Jenova is still out there."  And Sephiroth, or had he imagined that?  Must have imagined it, couldn't possibly happen.

"We'll go to the Promised Land together, love."

Cloud's hand slowly tightened.  "No, Jenova," he replied with sudden calm, and Aeris' arms tightened until he felt something in his back pop and smell of flowers turned into poison-green whispers.  In Cloud's dream, angels turned to devils and stubborn little boys were punished by their mothers.

...

Frost lined his feathers and eyelashes, turned his lips blue and his skin bloodless-white, but he felt nothing except the heartbeat in his ribs that wasn't his own.  It beat steadily and a little brokenly and a lot like a fishhook hooked under his sternum that pulled him relentlessly on.

He flew until ocean became land again, until snowy plains became grassland and towns appeared and disappeared more quickly.  He followed the nameless instinct that told him _there, he's there, find him, so close_ , and when the ocean stretched wide and dark again under a crescent moon he knew, he _knew_ , Cloud was there in that building made of glass and hope.  Other people stood between them but that didn't matter when the shadows stretched deep and the people believed they were safe, that no one could or would try to enter, and finally –

– finally Sephiroth leaned over the bed in which Cloud lay, Cloud's heartbeat matching the one in Sephiroth's ribs and pressing down on Jenova's voice until it was the only thing Sephiroth could hear.  He whispered, _Cloud_ , and Cloud opened his eyes.

 


	19. In Which There's Reunion (Sorta)

Aeris' arms were crushing him and Jenova's voice was dripping poison in his head and _then_ , then there was another voice, one he _knew_ , and it struck a chord so much deeper than anything Jenova could manage that Jenova was torn away with a shrill cry and Cloud's eyes flew open.

Familiar eyes, slitted pupils running like scars through mako-bright irises.  In his head, Zack was silent, and in his ribs, his heart stopped.   _Oh_.  There were hands on either side of his face and they were _holding him down_.  Cloud's breath sounded like _Sephiroth_ and his chest froze, his vision dilated and then tunneled until the whole world was soaked in green.

"Cloud," Sephiroth murmured, the sound spiking right through the numb haze, and Ultima was leaning against the wall out of Cloud's reach, _who was stupid enough to put it out of his reach,_ so his fingers were curling into fists before Cloud knew it.  He lashed out with blunt knuckles and a twisted snarl, felt himself bruising skin so cold he thought, _He feels like a corpse_.

His body, jacknifing up, slammed hard into Sephiroth's, knocking Sephiroth to the floor and the air out of Sephiroth's lungs.  Cloud followed and would have driven his knee straight down onto Sephiroth's sternum if Sephiroth hadn't managed to smack him to the side with an enormous, black wing.  They paused, both breathing hard, Cloud down on a knee in a defensive position and Sephiroth sitting up awkwardly.

 _Why are you here_ , Cloud's mind raced _, why did you leave, why weren't we enough for you, why wasn't_ I _enough enough for you?_   All he managed was, "Why?"

"You called me," Sephiroth said in a voice like cracked glass.

“Where’s Jenova?”

“I…I don’t know.”

 _Sane_. Sephiroth sounded _sane_ and Cloud didn’t even think that it was a delusion of his own damaged mind. He probably should’ve expected this because Sephiroth had thus far proven allergic to death, but _he was sane_ and looking at Cloud with the same expression that Sephiroth had always worn when he was upset and pretending he wasn’t.

“You have a wing.”

The feathers on said wing ruffled up a bit. Sephiroth twitched a glance at it. “Well. Yes. It’s a new addition.”

Cloud rocked back on his heels and stood up, slowly. Sephiroth didn’t move from his vulnerable position on the floor and just watched as Cloud’s breathing quickened. History was a tangible presence between them, burdened by the weight of pain and love and death and abandonment. “How did you,” Cloud tried to say, except that history caught his words in its net and he had to laugh, a little hysterical and a lot broken. “No, no, I should’ve known, I fucking should’ve known, and the Cetra…”

He put a hand over his face, so when fingers touched the back of his hand Cloud instinctively swung a fist that would’ve smashed into Sephiroth’s jaw if Sephiroth hadn’t jerked back in time. They paused for another long silence until Sephiroth tentatively reached out again, resting his fingertips so lightly on the cheekbone under Cloud’s eye that Cloud shuddered and nearly tried punching again.

“You made it into SOLDIER?” Sephiroth asked, unknowingly pushing the big red metaphorical button. Cloud tensed, hissed, “This is all Hojo’s work,” and pivoted under Sephiroth’s outstretched arm to snatch up Ultima. His momentum carried the blade up and around straight towards Sephiroth’s throat.  _Again._

…

Quistis knocked politely on the door of the guest quarters in which Seifer, Fujin, and Raijin were hiding. Vincent was a red-draped shadow lurking behind her, no doubt hilariously uncomfortable in the bright lights of the corridor.  It took a minute or two for the door to hiss open.  Fujin stood square in the doorway like a tiny, overprotective statue with a stony, one-eyed stare.

"I'd like to speak with Seifer," said Quistis, undaunted.

"NO."

Seifer's pale but determined face appeared over Fujin's head.  "Whaddya want, Trepe?"

"I'd prefer to speak in private rather than a public corridor."

"NO."

"It's about Jenova."

"...SIT."

"Thank you," Quistis said dryly, stepping inside with Vincent close on her heels.  Fujin stood to the side with visible reluctance while Seifer went back to one of the two beds in the dorm and sprawled with a great, albeit forced, show of nonchalance.  Quistis stood by the window and crossed her arms, casting a critical eye over Seifer, ignoring Raijin's awkward hovering at the foot of the bed and Vincent's lurking in a corner.  "I've been trying to come up with more information about Jenova.  These random attacks of hers...if we can't predict them, we'll be - "

"Caught with our pants down and our asses in the air?" Seifer deadpanned. 

"Not quite how I would put it, but essentially, yes."  She shifted, glanced at Fujin's blank expression, and finally said, "If the Sorceresses are remnants of Jenova, I need to know more about Ultimecia, too."

"NO."

"What, you never bothered to ask Princess?  Or did you forget he's got the whole Knighthood thing going on?"

"By the time it would've been relevant, Rinoa had already left and it didn't seem...prudent."

Seifer gave her a droll look from the corner of his eye.  "You mean you didn't want to hurt his _feelings."_ Quistis winced.  Seifer added, "Well, I suppose you didn't want to scare off the few he's got."

"Harsh, yanno," Raijin muttered.

"When you were still a Knight," Quistis pressed Seifer, "were you in control of yourself or was she?"

Seifer didn't reply at first, staring blindly up at the ceiling, and then he sighed with uncharacteristic weariness.  "What do you wanna hear, Trepe?  That poor little me didn't know what he was doing?  That he didn't have a choice?  That he's a _victim?"_

Quistis held his gaze steadily.  Seifer sat up, putting both feet on the floor and resting his elbows on his knees with a humorless smile.  "When you've got a Sorceress in your head, you _want_ her there.  You _like_ it, and you'd do _anything_ for her because all those promises of power?  She actually keeps them, which is more than SeeD ever fucking did.  When she's...inside you like that, you feel...righteous."  Seifer looked down at his, bare and callused.  "She's an addiction.  Kinda hard to say no to all that, even if you're Squall Leonhart."

Quistis chewed her lip.  They'd never been friends, didn't actually know each other that well, but he had been one of her students, one of the few others who knew what it was like to grow up exploring a lighthouse and listening to Edea's bedtime stories.  "Squall's always had trouble sleeping, and he hated talking about it, but one time he admitted that...in D-District, where - well, he said that you...apologized.  Afterwards.  When you thought he was unconscious."

"You know how near-death experiences can fuck you up," he replied evenly.  "Chemical imbalances.  PTSD.  Shit like that."

Off to the side, Fujin was giving Seifer a piercing look.  Raijin looked deeply uncomfortable.  Vincent was a rock.

"Seifer, I need to know how Ultimecia made you her Knight."

"WHY?" Fujin snapped.

"Because it might tell us how to reverse whatever Jenova did to you and Squall.  Maybe Cloud, too."  When Seifer still didn't say anything, she added wryly, "Do you have any other ideas?"

He snorted and leaned back against the wall.

"Give Squall what Jenova cannot," Vincent broke in.  Everyone jumped.

"EXPLAIN."

Vincent opened his mouth to do exactly that, light glinting off his fangs, when a distant explosion shuddered through the walls and the loudspeaker crackled to life with Kadowaki's voice.

_"Quistis!  Zell!  Get to the infirmary now!"_

The panic in Kadowaki's voice was more motivating than the actual explosion, pushing everyone out into the corridor and towards the infirmary.  Vincent moved like smoke on fast-forward, which Quistis had to admit was actually pretty cool, and was the first to stumble over Cloud and another man doing their best to cause as much property damage as superhumanly possible.  Zell, a hand clamped to his heaving side, appeared seconds after the rest in a pained run.

"Zell, check on Kadowaki," Quistis barked, pointing towards the closed door of Kadowaki's office with Save-the-Queen.  He nodded and banked sharply without slowing.  "Raijin, Fujin, flank them if you can!"

The two broke apart and took up positions on either side of the infirmary, a careful distance from flailing limbs and bursts of plaster dust.  Vincent walked right down the middle of the wing with an apparent deathwish and pulled out that unnecessarily large gun, pointing it indiscriminately at the center of the grudge match that was currently remodeling one of the private rooms and firing twice.  _"Stop,"_ he snarled, and it was the creepiest voice Quistis had ever heard, only half-human, a deeper, demonic echo underneath.

Cloud and the other man fell apart, panting heavily, one bleeding from the shoulder and the other from the meat of his thigh.  Ultima's point came to rest on the floor while the other man looked them all over with strained neutrality.

"Sephiroth," Vincent acknowledged calmly.  Quistis choked.

"Ow," Cloud muttered.

...

This was the third time they were all seated around a large table in one of Garden's conference rooms, but the atmosphere was the most intense it had ever been, partially due to a few of their number missing and a few new ones unexpectedly thrown in.  Quistis considered the merits of finding the flask Squall thought was so cleverly hidden in his office and passing it around the circle.  Or oval, rather, with Sephiroth -  _Sephiroth!_ \- sitting stiffly at one end so that everyone was able to stare at him.  Cloud remained standing, propping up a wall and looking like he wished he was part of it.  Neither he nor Sephiroth had allowed Kadowaki near their respective gunshot wounds, so Sephiroth was stoically ignoring the blood staining his nice pants and Cloud didn't seem to notice the blood staining _his_ shirt.

Zell let his head thump gracelessly onto the table.  "Should've just stayed unconscious," he told the table.

"Could be worse," Raijin offered.  "At least no one's trying to kill anyone."

Quistis glanced sidelong at Cloud's furrowed eyebrows and white-knuckled grip on Ultima.

"Hyne's _balls,"_ Seifer snorted, standing up and leaning forward, bracing himself with his hands, to look hard at Sephiroth.  "Look, I don't know who you are or where you came from, and I don't care because your _space alien mother_ isn't playing nice with the other kids and it's kinda starting to _tick me off_.  All I care about right now is whether you're gonna help us or if I have to take you out back and shoot you."

Quistis sighed internally and consoled herself with the fact that at least neither she nor Squall were the absolute worst at diplomacy after all.

"He can't be trusted," Cloud said softly.  "Regardless of his...personal wishes, he's too close to Jenova to resist her if she decided she wanted him back."

"Like me?" Seifer retorted archly.  "Like _you?"_

Cloud's eyes narrowed.  Quistis hurriedly interrupted.  "She already has Squall, why would she need or want Sephiroth?"

"POWER."

"Jenova wouldn't have brought him back otherwise," Seifer argued, and Quistis said, "But do we _know_ it was Jenova who brought him back?"

"Silly me, thinking only _really powerful magic beings_ could bring back people who've been dead for centuries."

"Perhaps we should ask Sephiroth," Vincent pointed out.  Everyone's attention immediately swung back to Sephiroth.

"It seems reasonable to conclude that this is Jenova's doing," Sephiroth said carefully, "but I don't know for certain.  I awoke in what I assume is the Northern Crater only a day or two ago.  The last thing I remember before that is the ShinRa library in Nibelheim."

"Liar."

"Why would I need to lie, Cloud?" Sephiroth asked quietly.

"How can you remember _nothing_ that's happened since then?"

"I should say that the library is the last _clear_ memory I have.  I remember...fragments, like a dream.  There was fire, and I remember you, in the reactor."

The tension between Cloud and Sephiroth was thick enough to choke on.  "You burned my village and everyone in it to the ground.  You tried to kill Zack and me.  It would've been better if you had."

"Then Zack survived?"

"ShinRa killed him while he was trying to escape with me from Hojo's lab," Cloud said, mercilessly crushing the faint note of hope in Sephiroth's tone.  "I'm sure you remember what Hojo was like."

Sephiroth very deliberately laid his hands flat on the table, not looking up.  "...I see."

"You two can twist the knives into each other's backs later," Seifer interjected.  "Killing Jenova and getting the others back is more important than your lover's spat."

Cloud's left eye twitched.


	20. In Which Cloud Finds the Chocobos

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Cloud was 16 here when he was involved with Sephiroth pre-game, and it wasn't emotionally healthy even though neither intended it.

Sephiroth was having to draw on every ounce of self-control honed by years of not throttling Heidegger during staff meetings to avoid staring at Cloud.  He didn't look at Cloud at all, actually, keeping his eyes on the strangers seated around the oval table.  Because he sat at the head of the table, they were able to look at _him_ quite keenly.

"We probably shouldn't kill him," Seifer was saying with an expansive gesture in Sephiroth's general direction.  "Jenova wanted him for a reason, so if we can figure out what that is, it might give us an advantage."

Quistis looked from Vincent to Cloud to Sephiroth and asked, "Is there a way to remove the Jenova cells?  Or whatever is granting her control?"

"Attempting to do so would cause madness, biological instability, and eventually death," Vincent said mildly.  "Before I went to sleep, I took the time to go through Hojo's notes.  Any attempts he had made at purging Jenova's cells from a specimen, usually with the desire to start over, always resulted in blood and violence."

"...Oh."

"I think I'd remember if Ultimecia tried something like _that,"_ Seifer scoffed.

"You sure?" Cloud asked, and Seifer suddenly looked like he actually wasn't.

"We don't know for certain that's what the Sorceresses did to you and Squall," Quistis reminded him, then turned to Sephiroth.  "So, are you with us or against us?"

He didn't reply at first, taking the time to evaluate each person.  Introductions had been rushed and stilted as though these people thought Sephiroth knowing their names would grant him some kind of power over them, which was understandable but also pointless, since the only person here Sephiroth for whom gave any kind of consideration was the only person refusing to meet his gaze. His fingers dug into the wooden armrests of the chair, leaving shallow impressions.

"For as long as my mind is my own," he said in a low but clear voice, "I am with you."

They spoke of possible battlegrounds and debated what Jenova's motives might be, as though something so alien could think so humanly _small_.  They spoke of missing comrades and unchecked hordes of monsters.  They spoke because they didn't know what to _do_ , caught in the center of a crossroads with no road signs and no map.

Finally, Vincent said, "There is one place that Jenova is likelier to choose than others."

A couple seconds passed before Cloud suddenly went pale, seemingly able to read Vincent's mind and horrified by what he found there. 

"Where?" Seifer demanded when Cloud kept silent.

"The Temple of the Ancients."

The SeeDs all shared a look of incomprehension.

"The Cetra Ruins," Cloud explained softly, but Quistis frowned and asked, "You mean the Centra?"

Vincent said, "Jenova has appeared at one of their sites before, and she once walked among them.  The Cetra's closeness to the Planet and thus the Lifestream may prove enticing enough to draw her in."

"It's the best lead we have," Zell agreed.

Seifer summed it all up with, "Well, fuck."

"We won't be able to use _Ragnarok_ until she gets cleaned up," Quistis broke in.  "The last fight wasn't easy on her."

Zell groaned.  "Chocobos?"

"Yep."

" _Damn_ it."

When a plan was made, forged of tin foil and cynical hope, Vincent led Sephiroth to what would officially be Sephiroth's guest quarters and unofficially his jail cell until the following morning.  They were small but not unreasonably so, with a bed and basic amenities and a tiny kitchenette in which Vincent immediately put a kettle on to boil.

"Tea?"

"Please."  Why not.  When Sephiroth tried to sit at the small table, he had to maneuver his wing over the back of the chair to avoid sitting on his own feathers.  Vincent sat across from Sephiroth, unabashedly scrutinizing him, until the kettle whistled.  When two mugs were on the table, Sephiroth's hands curled around his like it was a security blanket and one of Vincent's brassy claws quietly tapping the other, Sephiroth asked, "You were with Cloud at the Northern Crater?"

"I was."

Sephiroth forced himself to hold Vincent's gaze.  "What did Hojo do to him?"

 _Tap, tap, tap_ went Vincent's claw, the only sign of any emotion.  "He held Cloud, as well as Zack Fair, captive for four years.  You know better than anyone what Hojo is capable of."

"He was sixteen," Sephiroth murmured.  Things were fuzzy, but he could remember big, solemn blue eyes and skin still soft with adolescence under his hands.  He'd never seen it then, too determined to keep himself at a distance and therefore safe, but he could see the signs of someone who'd grown up knowing that happiness only happened to other people and yet was desperate to find it anyway.  Sephiroth remembered pieces of the things he'd said to Cloud and realized he hadn't needed Jenova's influence to be cruel.

"And you were far younger than that when Hojo held you."

Sephiroth narrowed his eyes.  "And that makes what Cloud went through acceptable?"

"No.  I only mean to point out that age only ever mattered to Hojo if he felt that it suited his ends."

"I, of all people, already know this."

Vincent blinked slowly, like a large cat.  "Did you know your mother was human?"

The non sequitur made Sephiroth's hands threaten to crack the mug.  "Explain yourself."

"Her name was Lucrecia.  Hojo began injecting Jenova's cells when you were _in vitro_ , but she gave birth to you naturally and gave you your name.  She said it was the name of a very old concept of divine creation that has been all but forgotten."

Was that some kind of cruel irony?  "The way you speak suggests that you two were close."

"As a Turk, I was part of the lab's security detail."

But it was more than that.  There was something almost imperceptibly softer in his voice.  "Security detail.  Was that all?"

Vincent didn't say anything.  Sephiroth's wing twitched fitfully, though the rest of him didn't move.  "I would like to be alone, please."

"As you wish."  Vincent rose, gave him a short bow, and slipped out of the room like a thief that could steal the air from one's lungs.  Sephiroth stared into the murky brown of his barely-touched tea and thought about things like Cloud's eyes wide with agony, Hojo's claims of parentage, and the folly of man until long after the sun set and the guest quarters had gone dark.

...

_Cloud dreamed, and it sucked.  He was newly sixteen and fucking his superior, who Cloud wasn't entirely sure really cared about him all that much, not when Cloud tentatively pushed open the door to Sephiroth's office and poked in his head.  "Sephiroth?  Sir?"_

_"I did not request your presence, Private," Sephiroth said, neither cruel nor gentle.  Cloud came inside and shut the door behind himself anyway, pretending he couldn't see the tension starting to wind up Sephiroth's shoulders._

_"Zack said that you...were upset," Cloud said delicately.  He figured he shouldn't mention what else Zack had said._

_"Indeed," Sephiroth replied, toneless.  "You're dismissed."_

_Fuck it, Cloud thought, it's not like he had much to lose at this point anyway, and if he died, well, at least he'd have an answer.  He walked around the imposing desk until he was behind Sephiroth, who looked like he would crack down the middle if he got any tenser, and leaned forward very slowly until he was pressed against Sephiroth's back over the top of the chair, arms tucked between them and his face buried in long hair.  Sometimes a hug felt like a cage, so Cloud just kept leaning against him, and eventually Sephiroth's shoulders relaxed as he let out a quiet breath._

_Times like these, Cloud had seen, Zack would poke and prod until Sephiroth either threw him out or told him what he wanted to know so Zack would go away.  Cloud just whispered, "Do you, uh, want to talk about it?"_

_"No."_

_They stayed like for a little while.  Then Sephiroth said, very softly, "Thank you."_

Cloud woke up with a sob in his throat and a small, unidentifiable monster gnawing on his hair.  Cloud pushed it away, hardly noticing its disgruntled squeak, and sat up hazily.  The blood on his clothes had dried into a tacky mess, and when he ran an absent hand through his hair, it came back streaked with some kind of goo.

He left the Training Room and considered going back to his quarters, but there were insects crawling under his skin and the thought of sitting quietly and alone made his chest hurt.  So he swung by the cafeteria, which was just opening its doors, and grabbed something to eat, didn't matter what as long as it had calories, then meandered towards the hangar.  He hadn't said a single word, just sort of drifted through the world until he nearly walked right into Zell and got jarred back to the Planet.

"Wow, you look like shit," Zell told him, eyeing the stains on Cloud's clothes and probably his hair, and hefted the pile burlap bags in his arms that must have weighed nearly as much as Selphie.  "I'm going to feed the chocobos before we go.  Wanna come?"

Cloud took half the bags of greens and followed Zell to the far side of the hangar, which led to a short hallway that in turn led to the familiar smells and sounds of a stable full of chocobos.  "We don't normally stock them ourselves, since we usually just rent them from locals, but Xu was thinking about introducing a new riding program and wanted to see how the birds went over with the students.  Let's just say that a SeeD's strength is not in a saddle."

Cloud smiled faintly.  The chocobos were smoothing out some of the rough bits inside him just by doing their chocobo thing, and he thought about how one can take a kid out of the country but not the country out of the kid, even with a raging inferno that killed most of the kid's town.

Making sure the tall, reinforced gate was locked firmly behind him, Cloud ripped open a bag of greens and mimicked Zell's slow passage past the stalls, scattering greens and opening half-doors as he went.  The chocobos poured out, trilling, and it quickly became an interesting physics puzzle to try squeezing his smaller mass through a crowd of much larger masses.

"You and Squall are a lot alike," Zell called out conversationally from the far end of the stables.

When it seemed like he wasn't going to go on, Cloud asked, "How so?"

"Well, you're both assholes, for one," Zell explained, grinning like it was the funniest damn joke in the world, and Cloud felt an actual smile on his face.  Miracles.

The chocobos were mostly yellows with a scattering of greens, blues, two reds, and one black, plus a few of what appeared to be real goldens.  They all cooed and warbled, bumping against each other and the humans without a care in the world.  Cloud unhurriedly made his way down the aisle, glancing over the half-doors, and stopped when he found a tiny flock made of a handful of multicolored feather balls puttering around on feet almost as big as their round bodies.  The chicobos peeped, and all the angst melted like an ice cube into a puddle of adorable.

The chicobos gathered around Cloud with intense curiosity when he kneeled down and pulled off his gloves.  They nipped at his fingers and tripped all over themselves and snapped uselessly at random bits of fluff that puffed up into the air from all their excitement.  Their musty, leafy scent reminded Cloud of long grassy plains, lonely mountain peaks, and the thrill of an uncomplicated competition.

He heard Zell's footsteps approach and stop just outside the stall.  "We're leaving for the Centra Ruins tomorrow afternoon.  Quistis wanted to leave early in the morning, but Seifer pointed out that several of us either just got out of the infirmary, shot through the heart like an old rock song, or both, so they compromised."

"They compromised?"

"If you consider threats and brandished weapons compromise, yes," Zell admitted, "but at least no one's inclined to make life harder than it already is.

"Look," Zell sighed when Cloud kept ignoring him in favor of the chicobos.  "We're not stupid.  There's obviously more going on between you and Sephiroth than you've told us, and if I'm guessing right on what it is, I'm not about to ask.  But you know what else you and Squall have in common?  Living in the past too much.  When Seifer left us for Ultimecia, Squall got...even colder, I guess, and he came out of Time Compression kind of squirelly.

"My point is that if you keep doing what Squall did, you're gonna end up the same way."

"With Jenova?"

"Hey, if you go batshit, then Sephiroth might, too, and who knows, maybe Seifer, but either way, we'd be so fucked.  So, like, don't do that."

Cloud let out a long breath before getting to his feet and pulling his gloves back on.  The chicobos warbled unhappily.

"I need a shower."

Zell wrinkled his nose.  "Dude, no kidding."


	21. In Which People Ride Chocobos a Lot

The hot water untangled some of the knots in Cloud's back as he stood under the spray, eyes closed, carefully not thinking about Sephiroth's hands touching his body without breaking it.  Water tainted by monster blood ran down in rivulets several shades too dark, and by the time it started flowing clear he realized that he'd somehow ended up sitting on the shower's tile floor, back pressed against the fogged glass wall and his knees pulled up towards his chest, breath coming in short, wet gasps.

He sat there for a while, fingers pressing hard into the tile floor until the tips turned white and it felt like the nails were slowly being pulled off.  It was real pain, a tangible cause-and-effect that left spots of white and red under the skin instead of threads of green.  He stared at those little discolorations until he was able to relax his hands, brace himself against the wall to get back on his feet, shut off the water with a quiet gurgle in the pipes.  The air was as hot and humid as breath against the back of a neck but he still had goosebumps from the chill running under his skin.

It was sometime near dawn when Cloud gave up trying to sleep.  The black jeans and sleeveless shirt Cloud pulled on had that oddly sharp scent of denim and elastic that always seemed to cling to new clothes, even ones borrowed from the stock of a mercenary school.  They fit well enough, though he suspected that it wasn't a mistake that the quartermaster handed him jeans which turned out to be a bit tighter than what he'd been wearing before.  He dressed perfunctorily and didn't think about much of anything at all except that cold itchiness under his skin.  Somewhere nearby, under the same roof, probably using the same damn water, was --

Dressed, boots on, Ultima slung across his back, Cloud left the small guest quarters for the labyrinth that was Garden.  He didn't know where he was going, just turned down corridors that had the fewest early-morning people, thought about tracking down the Training Room and found he couldn't stomach the thought of more monsters, more killing, more four-walled rooms that hid their secrets so well.  The sounds of metallic clangs and engine purrs, so different from those in the hangar, eventually caught Cloud's attention, and he followed them to a garage packed with more varieties of military vehicles he'd ever seen, including, most importantly, several rows of shining motorcycles.  There were a few attendants around who didn't seem to notice him.  After a quick glance at the guard's booth squatting near the open garage doors, he threw a leg over some gorgeous black beast he would've loved to have some personal time with and settled into the seat as he got to work.  It may have been misadventures with Zack that taught him how to hotwire a bike, but it was all Cloud who kicked up the stand, took a breath, and roared out past startled SeeDs for the open plains.  What had once been a brown desert of scraggly grass at the height of mako energy use was now thick with green and the delicate wash of dawn.

It wasn't running away.  He was planning to come back, just...later.  He was good at that.

...

_Because Cloud had unashamedly lied through his teeth to get into the military (“What do you mean I look fourteen, I’m sixteen, you can see it right there on my ID, thanks”) and was thus smaller and appeared younger than his peers, he was a prime target.  Cloud’s willingness to use fists and boots to violate the unspoken Guy Code was usually enough to save him, but sometimes he was caught off guard and it wasn’t long before he was on a first-name basis with the infirmary attendants._

_“Where have you been?” Sephiroth asked. Cloud froze in the doorway to Sephiroth’s office with the keycard clenched tightly between his fingers.  
_

_“The infirmary?” he replied, almost a question. When Sephiroth got up and came around his desk, Cloud debated on the likelihood of being able to sprint back to the elevators before Sephiroth caught him, or killed him, or whatever verb was foretold by that inscrutable line between Sephiroth’s brows. Cloud caught his breath when Sephiroth reached out and didn’t quite touch the bruise painted across one of Cloud’s cheekbones._

_“What happened?”_

_“Well, there was a corridor, and I guess someone didn’t like me walking down it?”_

_“Someone ambushed you.”_

_“Er. Yeah. I mean, yessir, they did.”_

_“’They’?”_

_“It might’ve been two."_

_A raised eyebrow._

_"...Maybe three.”_

_“You were ambushed by three other cadets in an empty hallway, no doubt after most had returned to their quarters and did not witness anything.”_

_“It’s not my fault they deserved getting boots to their balls,” Cloud said, indignant, then flushed and added, “Sir.”_

_“You’re all right.” Sephiroth made it sound like a statement, like reality was as much under his command as the SOLDIERs, which was sometimes kind of hot and sometimes kind of terrifying. Cloud’s teenage hormones couldn’t decide._

_“At least now I know that I’m finally tall enough to kick higher than their shins.”_

_Cloud's eyes widened when Sephiroth laughed quietly and, slowly, reached up to put his hands on either side of Cloud's face.  Cloud stood very still, not really sure what was going on when Sephiroth tilted his head back and a little to the side so that Sephiroth could lean down and very gently press a kiss over the bruise.  When he pulled back, he was wearing an expression that Cloud didn't recognize but which made his fingertips all tingly.  They never acted like this,_ Sephiroth _never acted like this, and he wasn't sure what to make of it._

...

Later, the smell and dust of Balamb’s plains drew the chocobos towards Cloud like cats to nip. Their beaks nudged him hard enough in their search for greens hidden in pockets that Cloud nearly ended up on the bottom of a pile of warm, feathered bird.

“Oi, back up,” he grumbled, blocking a wing from smacking his face, and when a chocobo stared into his eyes with big, soulful ones of his own, Cloud said, “Nice try, you big bastard,” and soothed its woefully drooping feathers with scritches behind its crest. It leaned harder and harder against him, cooing with happiness, until Cloud was pinned between the chocobo and a wooden post.

“Gods damn it,” he muttered.  He shoved away the big, fluffy body -- gods, he always forgot how _heavy_ the damn birds were -- so he could wiggle away and duck out of the corral, pulling the half-door closed behind him before the chocobos could follow.  The soulful eyes returned and Cloud backed up, hands in the air, shaking his head and saying, "No, no, don't you start with me, I used to be the master of soulful eyes and you can't fool a master."

Zell found him about an hour later sitting in the straw, surrounded by chocobos and no doubt looking disgruntled.  "I'm pretty sure we gave you a people-place to sleep," Zell said.

"I felt the call of my brethren," Cloud deadpanned.  "This is the song of my people."

Zell busted up.  Cloud quickly kneeled up and grabbed the tray of food Zell was carrying before it could join him on the floor, then got to his feet when the chocobos stretched out their beaks with sudden interest.

"Why the breakfast in bed?"

"Figured you wouldn't show up in the cafeteria if Sephiroth was there," Zell managed, still grinning, which was true, so Cloud just braced the tray on the low wall away from the chocobos and started shoveling scrambled eggs into his mouth.  Zell lazily leaned back against a post with his arms crossed.

"So, just to complete my role as messenger, I've got news.  Quistis has her hands full this morning with Laguna, who's apparently trying to do some damage control when some rumors about a Sorceress being back got into the papers.  Vincent and Seifer took Sephiroth down to the Training Room to see what he can do before we take off today."

Cloud wondered why no one just asked _him_ what Sephiroth could do.

"It'll take about three, maybe four days to get down the western continent to the ruins if we use the golden chocobos.  We'll stay the first night in Timber."

Frowning, thinking back to the map he'd seen on the  _Ragnarok_ , Cloud asked, "Why not go down through Esthar?"

"We figured the extra travel time was worth avoiding the shitstorm that would be Esthar on high alert seeing a bunch of SeeDs riding through on goldens."

At least it wasn't a worldwide manhunt of mindfuckery again.

"Sephiroth's a bit of a trip, isn't he?"  Cloud gave him a sidelong look, and Zell explained, "I figured he would've thrown a fit about being tailed everywhere by now.  Or at least done something about Seifer.  Even _Squall_ took his fair share of swings at that asshole and he's, like, got the poker face from hell."

"You're fishing for something.  Stop it."

"Just curious."

Cloud finally looked him right in the face.  When he said, "You're a sly bastard and no one even knows it," Zell grinned and winked and grabbed the breakfast tray on his way out of the stables.

By the time people began trickling into the stables, the sun was bright outside the stables and casting deep, cool shadow inside.  Cloud had several chocobos tacked up by the time the SeeDs trooped in, Sephiroth and Vincent trailing along behind and looking uncomfortable in the late morning sun outside the stables.

"You already have them ready to go?" Quistis asked.  "When did you have time?"

"I was up early," Cloud said vaguely.  When a bird poked its beak over his shoulder, Cloud patted it fondly with a few hollow thumps.

"What, were you a breeder or something?"  Seifer sounded just contemptuous enough for Cloud to look him straight in the eye and say, "Or something."

Seifer scowled. Cloud happened to glance over Seifer's shoulder and meet Sephiroth's gaze entirely on accident, Sephiroth's expression so stoic if not for the subtle quirk of amusement in his lips, and Cloud abruptly pushed the chocobo back so he could busy himself with the process of getting everyone on the back of a bird.  Unfortunately, every bird that Cloud gently led out of the stable by the reins refused to go anywhere near Sephiroth or Vincent, perhaps because their mako and strange genetic vectors weren't tempered by being short and fluffy like Cloud, so Cloud got Quistis, Seifer, and Zell taken care of first.

"Where are Raijin and Fujin?" he asked, and Quistis said, "They'll be staying here in case we need people here at Garden."

"And because we need some substitute teachers," Zell volunteered, gripping the reins rather tighter than necessary.

"Or engineer a coup while the adults are away," Seifer tossed in.  He looked perfectly at ease on his bird.

There was only so long Cloud could put off talking to Sephiroth directly, so he maneuvered a chocobo between them and said quietly, "Put your hands on the reins.  Don't move too quickly or hold your arms out, you want to look as nonthreatening as possible."

In similar jeans and shirt from what was probably the same SeeD stock, Sephiroth's intimidation level was, fortunately, dialed back from eleven for once.  Sephiroth silently did as Cloud directed, bare hands near but not touching Cloud's gloved ones on the reins.  The chocobo danced nervously, trilled questioningly, and then stilled easily when Cloud started scritching its crest again, and Cloud kept his eyes on shifting feathers so he wouldn't have to see Sephiroth's eyes resting on him.  Dear gods, he probably looked like a teenager fumbling around his crush at a school dance.

When the chocobo figured out that Sephiroth wasn't going to try eating it, when Sephiroth was able to take the reins from Cloud and swing up into the saddle, Sephiroth murmured a simple, "Thank you," that somehow managed to have all the emotional punch of an unexpectedly gentle kiss.  Cloud gave him a brief look and turned to Vincent, going through the same motions while Seifer snarked at Zell and Zell threatened to punch his face and Quistis visibly regretted being the adult.

Eventually the stables were closed, a few supply packs adjusted -- Cloud was pleased to see some extra firepower, just in case -- some obligatory bitching from Seifer, and the long plains of Balamb were finally stretching out in front of them towards the western sea.

...

Sephiroth couldn't help leaning forward in the saddle and taking several deep breaths.  The air was heavy with the salty sweetness of the ocean, overlaying a mosaic of grass and dirt from the plains and vehicle exhaust from Balamb.  The chocobos bore the musk of warm living creatures, and from where he rode behind Cloud, Sephiroth fancied he could smell clean sweat and hot metal and the slight taint of mako.

They all rode in silence, Cloud in the lead and riding tall and easy like he'd been born to the saddle.  The longer they rode, the more the lines of stress in Cloud's face were worn smooth and young, and a sharp blade of loneliness and regret suddenly scored deeply between Sephiroth's ribs _._

They skirted Balamb, and from the distance it looked like a seaside dream of white columns and cobblestones, nothing like the glare and piercing angles of Midgar.  They rode on until they reached the sea, shining the same way that a small stream of snow-melt near Nibelheim had shone in the weak sun, and Sephiroth couldn't help stretching out his one wing to feel the thick air rifling between its feathers.

"Ready, assholes?" Seifer grinned as the birds slowed near the waterline.

"You do realize that all this swearing doesn't make you a badass, right?" Quistis asked him, and Seifer replied, "You can't fucking change who I fucking am," and kicked his chocobo into a run straight past Cloud and towards the waves.

"Squall's a fucking saint for not finishing that 'x' on his face," Quistis muttered, left Zell choking behind her as she took off.  Sephiroth caught Cloud's sidelong glance, half-obscured by yellow hair, almost exactly the same as when Cloud was still sixteen and in infantryman blues and too obviously wondering why a SOLDIER general would have anything to do with him, and as they ran into the sea he realized, _This is what I gave up without a second thought_.

They reached Timber by late evening and found an affordable inn that didn't have cockroaches as a complimentary feature in the three two-person rooms they paid for.  Sephiroth's shoulders relaxed when it was decided that Cloud would room with Seifer and Vincent offered to stay with Sephiroth.  Dinner was a subdued affair.

"What're we gonna do when we get there?" Zell asked his plate, and after a long pause, Quistis said, "Our best.  What else _can_ we do?"

Cloud excused himself the moment he set down his fork.  Quistis and Zell retreated into their room while Seifer asked the innkeeper about the nearest bar, and Vincent trailed along after Sephiroth until the door to their own room closed behind them.  They would be leaving at dawn the next morning for a full day of travel and Sephiroth _knew_ he should take advantage of a proper bed while he could, he did, but the wing was a heavy weight on his shoulder and closing his eyes meant dreaming of Cloud's blood on his hands.

"You remind me of her," Vincent tells him later, words as accurate as his bullets.  "Sometimes you could she wasn't looking at the present.  I used to ask her what she saw."

"And what would she say?" Sephiroth prompted slowly.  He was sitting on the edge of the bed, debating whether or not it'd be worth reading the tabloid someone left behind just to have something to do.

Vincent replied, "'What could have been.'"

Sephiroth picked up the tabloid ("THIS FAMOUS ACTOR CAUGHT RED-HANDED WITH NANNY"), its glossy cover creased and rubbed bare in places.  He could sympathize with that.

"She was wasting her time, then," Sephiroth said harshly, and got up to take a shower so hot it left his paper-pale skin raw.

...

When Seifer came back reeking of booze, Cloud mourned the fact that mako pretty much killed everything fun about alcohol and carried on his weapons check-up routine.  Seifer sprawled languorously on the bed nearest the door and kicked off his boots.  "So what did Sephiroth give you?"

"What?"

"What did he give you?  He said he had a gift for Cloud and I don't fucking know anyone else named Cloud, so what was it?"

As far as Cloud knew, just a migraine and emotional trauma.  "Nothing."

"Bullshit."

"The truth usually is."

"Whatever."  Seifer wiggled out of his long coat, too lazy to sit up properly, and spread out all his limbs like a starfish until his hands and feet were hanging over the edges of the bed.  Cloud thought of Yuffie and Barret, larger than life and not afraid to show it, but when they had filled a room with bravado and a smirk it wasn't because they were trying to cover up a soft underbelly.  Vincent had mentioned Seifer and some kind of vision a few days ago, hadn't he?

"How did you survive?"

Seifer's uncharacteristically soft tone made Cloud's hands pause in the middle of cleaning a firearm barrel.  He nearly asked, _Survived what?_ but that seemed too cruel.

"I just...kept going."

Seifer snorted at the ceiling.  Cloud added, "Squall asked me the same thing."

"And what did you tell him?"

"Depends on whether pride or survival is more important."

Seifer disappeared into the bathroom.  Cloud cleaned the oil off his hands with a rag soaked in a mild solvent, reeking with an acidic stench, and packed everything away.  There was no sound of Seifer rattling around or turning on the shower or anything, just silence, and he was still in there by the time Cloud finally curled up on his side facing the wall and fell asleep.

The second day was spent almost entirely on riding across the ocean itself, which was admittedly terrifying and rather uncomfortable, and setting up camp on the shore not far from the chocobo forest.  When Cloud was told what the forest was, his expression made Seifer mock him for being a better chocobo-person than a people-person until Cloud knocked him flat on his ass.  Seifer didn't mock him after that, but he did let Cloud swing Hyperion around a few times after a dinner of canned beans and sandwiches like a kid sharing his toys on the playground. 

No one laughed when Seifer muttered at one point, "It'd be really fucking funny to get to the ruins and find out she isn't there."

On the third night, they made camp only a few hours away from the ruins, figuring it'd be better to face whatever was there on a fresh new day rather than the end of a long one.  The forest was beginning to give way to drier rock, and Cloud hobbled the chocobos near a thick patch of grass while the others got out tents and made a fire and did whatever else they could do to distract themselves from thoughts of tomorrow.

"Cloud."

It'd only been a matter of time, Cloud reminded himself gloomily.  He kept his eyes on the feathers he was fingercombing straight, kinked as they were from rubbing against saddles and riders all day.  "Sephiroth."

"Zell has finished cooking."

More beans, judging from the smell.  "Fine."

But Sephiroth didn't go away after that and Cloud contemplated throwing a currycomb, sitting unused in a pack, at his head.  Instead he tightened the hold he had on the reins with one hand, the other still tugging gently on feathers.

"I'm sorry."

Sephiroth's ability to slice as deeply with his words as with the Masamune certainly hadn't gone rusty.  Cloud threw down the reins and squared off against Sephiroth, poking him in the chest with a finger.  "Well, thank the Planet for that.  Now I can sleep at night without wondering if you're going to try torturing me again just for the _fun_ of it."

Sephiroth's lips thinned and, yeah, Cloud remembered that expression very well from those times when he hadn't lived up to the great veteran general's expectations as a brand-new teenage recruit, because gods forbid a kid ever make mistakes, and he remembered that expression from those times when he was able to push through whatever mindfuck was going on and tell Sephiroth to take his genocidal crazy elsewhere.

But then that line faded, Sephiroth's shoulders rising ever so slightly with defensiveness when he quietly said, "You have always deserved better," and walked back towards the campfire where the others were studiously pretending that they weren't trying to eavesdrop.

Cloud ran a hand through his hair and let out an explosive breath, and he grimaced when he realized that the thought to reach for a weapon had never actually occurred to him.  "Fuck," he sighed.

...

"So, this is weird," Zell commented the following morning.  The six of them were sitting on their chocobos and staring up at the enormous white temple sprawling over the landscape and reaching up towards the sky with vine-wrapped spires.

"This is the Temple of the Ancients," Vincent said, but Quistis shook her head and explained, "No, Zell's right.  We're in the right place, but the Centra ruins didn't look anything like this last time we were here."

"Brilliant," Seifer sighed.

Quistis caught Cloud's frown, which hadn't left since whatever was said between him and Sephiroth last night, as he said, "But it's always looked like this."

"It was occupied until about, what, eighty years ago, I think.  Whoever resettled it after your time must've changed it, which means neither of us can rely on what we remember about it."

"Mazes are too puzzling to deal with this early in the morning," Zell cracked.  Quistis didn't feel guilty about thunking him upside the head.

Vincent was staring at the ruins with a carefully blank expression while Cloud looked like he was preparing to walk to the gallows.  Sephiroth suddenly announced, "She's here."

"So is Squall."  Seifer sat up straighter in the saddle, a kind of authority Quistis had never seen in him before settling over his shoulders.  A _knightly_ authority, even, and she rolled her eyes at herself.

Zell squinted up at the ruins, took a deep breath, and tugged his Ergheiz gloves on more firmly.  "Showtime."

 


	22. In Which Tentacles Aren't Kinky

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are some differences in the way I had characterized Cloud before _Crisis Core_ came out, given we only had the original game and the first version of AC, and the way I would characterize him now. Halfway through rewriting this chapter I realized that what was happening was making _no goddamn sense_ , even in the context of a semi-crackfic, and I had to change some plot points. Hopefully it works better now.

 

They left the chocobos to wander outside, figuring that if they needed the birds to run away from Jenova then it would probably be too late anyway.  Cloud led the way into the Temple, half-expecting to see Tseng slumped against an altar or hear Cait Sith's weirdly cold tones talking about betrayal. 

Zell and Quistis were twisting their heads around in awe at the high marble ceilings and grand archways, veined with rich leafy vines that had been left to grow freely along cracks and doorways.  Sunlight poured in through jagged holes in the roof, lighting up the still air.  If things had happened differently, Cloud might've been able to hear it as the reverent quiet of a church without the echoes of a small materia rolling down marble stairs and plopping into the water where Aeris had been laid to rest _._ Their footsteps echoed off the stone corridors, emphasizing the vastness and abandonment.  There wasn't even the ghostly _nyum-nyum_ of the temple's guardians.  Perhaps, he thought gloomily, the reverent quiet of a church was more like the chilled silence of a mausoleum. 

"How do we find Jenova?" Zell whispered.  He didn't actually need to whisper, but it was one of those places that seemed too delicate to handle anything louder.

"We don't," Cloud replied just as Sephiroth murmured, "She will find us."

 _Just as you did._ Cloud wished he could let it go, he really did, he needed to focus on the problem right now, but all he could think about was Sephiroth's light tread at his side, the rustle of his clothes, the glint of light off the sword that Cloud himself had felt slice into his body and right out the other side.  This place wasn't making it any easier.

The group continued through a maze of hallways, Cloud intervening in a hoarse voice to explain the solution to the clock-shaped bridge before Seifer could follow through on his threat to blow the damn thing to hell, but they didn't find anything worse than cobwebs and the occasional moldering skeleton.  Not a single humble dragonfly tried to stab them.  When one of the hallways got particularly narrow, Seifer said to Sephiroth, "Hope you aren't gonna be helpless if you have to pull out that cock-measure in here."

Sephiroth replied, "Don't worry, Almasy.  Even without the Masamune, I am quite capable of protecting you should you get into trouble," and despite himself, Cloud had to hide a grin.

 _ **Traitors**_.

A cold wind dug its fingers into the cracks between his thoughts, worse than any Nibelheim winter, and Cloud froze just as Seifer and Sephiroth did.

 _ **Liars**_.

"Guys?" Zell tried, tentative, while Save-the-Queen unfurled from Quistis' hip and Death Penalty materialized from beneath Vincent's cloak.  But it wasn't just Jenova: there was another tone, a masculine one, doubling up with Jenova's higher one and harmonizing in a way that would make crystal glasses shudder.

"Where the fuck are you, Princess?" Seifer demanded, gloves squeaking from clenched fists, whipping around to look back the way they came, but then Sephiroth was yelling, "Down!" and a bright purple tentacle shot through the air over their heads.  Cloud grabbed Seifer's arm and yanked him forwards down the hallway, ignoring his snarls and only releasing him when they all tumbled out into a broad cavern that left them room to move.

Another tentacle lashed out from the hallway they'd just left, narrowly missing Vincent, who immediately fired into the hallway's shadows and got back several wet squelches.  The Masamune sliced cleanly through the tentacle, leaving half of it writhing on the floor like some giant, nauseatingly violet worm, the other half snapping rubber-like back to its source.  It was something towering, a mass of flesh that looked just like some of the specimens Hojo had left lying around the lab, gelatinous and with a vaguely human-shaped shadow in its center that Cloud guessed, with a sick roll of his stomach, was Rinoa.  Rinoa was suspended in Jenova in a way that nonsensically reminded Cloud of the fruit bits suspended in Tifa's gelatin desserts.

In front of Jenova stood Squall, white shirt stained with blood that still hadn't dried over the tentacle-shaped hole in his body.  The blankness on his face wasn't all that unusual, honestly; the only real difference was the pair of feathered wings stretching out from his shoulders, as snowy white as Sephiroth's was coal black. 

Cloud had just enough time to feel a little left out with the lack of extra appendages before Jenova's mind slid over his, slick as oil and reeking of the need to _destroy._ He could feel Sephiroth's mind, too, torn between revulsion and unwitting jealousy, and more distantly there was Seifer's, reeking of anger and depression.  Squall was suddenly moving without so much as a taunting smirk or monologue, so blindingly fast that Cloud only just managed to bring up Ultima and block Lion Heart with a grunt.  Just as quickly Squall was no longer there, already dropping low to get under the broadsword's guard.

 _"Shit!"_ Zell yelled from the side somewhere.  While Squall was keeping Cloud busy - and wasn't _that_ some bullshit right there, a goddamn teenager showing up the equivalent of a SOLDIER First - the monsters that were of the same brand as the ones that had decimated Dollet were screeching, hissing, and squishing out from the corridor behind Jenova.  Cloud was dimly aware of Vincent shooting at the bottleneck, trying to slow them while Zell and Quistis launched themselves forward. 

Seifer came up behind Squall's back and tried to smash Hyperion's hilt into Squall's skull, but Squall danced out of reach, swung out with Lion Heart before Seifer could pull back from the blow, and narrowly missed slitting Seifer's throat because Ultima forced him to twist and take several steps back.

...

Squall knew exactly what was happening.  He knew it was Quistis and Zell.  He knew it was Seifer, _Seifer_ , who he could see more clearly than he ever had before.  He could see Seifer's grandest and pettiest thoughts, his hatreds and fears, his past marked up with betrayal and his future in which the death that Squall would grant him would be a mercy.

The shouting and snarling, the gunshots, the ringing of blades and snapping of a whip were a deafening cacophony echoing in the temple's marble chamber, but Mother kept his head as clear as Shiva's frozen tundra.  _**They cannot hurt you** **anymore**_ , she sang to him, and she sang to him the clarity he needed to know right from wrong, that it wasn't different perspectives that separated one from one's enemies after all.  These people had _done wrong_.

Mother thrived on mako, and through her Squall could see the flickers of its glow in Cloud, her second-eldest child, giving Squall the instant he needed to stay ahead of that enormous broadsword.  He could feel the dim and unremarkable flickers of two humans, the darkness of a being who carried one of the Planet's WEAPONs inside of itself ( ** _CHAOS_** , Jenova whispered to him), and the three who were like him and rang with power in time with Mother's heartbeat.  Each had been broken in some way and Mother had filled in the cracks.

It took all of Squall's speed to stay on his toes, but his body was strong, every shift in balance and flex of muscle working in concert and a million miles away from the grey, sleepless tedium of the commander's office.  Paperwork was for those who had no grand purpose and would die an ignominious death.  He was living (dying) for the first time in his short, cold, lonely (by choice) existence.

**_You will never hurt again, my son, my love._ **

_She's lying, Squall._

Squall jerked, growling when Ultima left a shallow slice just below his collarbones, and the muscles in his back and shoulders groaned at their unfamiliar job of flaring a pair of wings so wide.  _The traitor_ , he thought, looking at Sephiroth and realizing he was attempting to hack through the tentacles to Jenova's heart, _he's the one who dares to argue_.  But every move Squall made towards him was blocked by Cloud, the puppet, the accident, so he reached out and struck a harsh chord in the song that represented Cloud's mind.  When Cloud cried out and staggered, Squall ducked Hyperion again, sidestepped around Cloud, and raised Lion Heart to fire.

Sephiroth was goddamn fast, though, and jerked aside to avoid the shots.  Squall watched helplessly as Sephiroth managed to dodge all the flailing tentacles and skewer the Masamune through the disgusting mass of Jenova's body and straight into Rinoa's chest.

Everything went very, very quiet for a long second before it shattered under the weight of a piercing wail that reverberated through the four men's skulls.  _No_ , Squall wanted to scream back, no, he couldn't lose anyone else and, Hyne, she was his whole world and now a blade was stuck through her heart.

 _Yeah, that seems to happen a lot_ , Cloud gasped weakly.

 _You've fallen so far you can't even see the cage she's locked you in,_ Sephiroth's voice echoed as he yanked back the Masamune with a sickening crunch of bone and squelch of flesh, the tentacles flailing with the pain and mindless panic of a wounded creature.  He, Zell, and Quistis were forced back to avoid them, and the monsters that Vincent had been picking off started dying like they had in Dollet, dropping where they stood or slithered or crawled.

"Squall!"

Seifer's voice sliced clean through the bullshit.  Squall gasped for air like he was surfacing from a deep, dark sea in which he'd been drowning and tried turning around to see Seifer, but all he managed was a drunken stumble.

"Sei - " he managed to get out before the rest was lost in the blood that flooded his mouth and burbled over his lips.  He stopped stumbling backwards, but only because a couple tentacles had abruptly pierced his back and come out the other side of his ribs and guts. 

The wings twitched reflexively against the solid muscle of the tentacles.  "No, no, no," Seifer was babbling, carelessly tossing Hyperion aside and sprinting forward while Squall dimly asked her, _Why?_

**_I will not leave this world alone._ **

The suspension holding him upright abruptly gave way under Ultima flashing through the tentacles behind him.  Seifer managed to catch him before he hit the ground, trying to pull him close but stymied by the limbs still protruding from Squall's front.  A broken sound slipped out of Squall's mouth with another burst of blood that spattered over Seifer's sweat-soaked shirt and dripped thickly down Squall's chin.

"Hey, hey, Squall," Seifer said, kneeling down and pulling Squall halfway in his lap, "c'mon, asshole, stay awake.  Squall.  Squall!"

Squall felt his body being jostled, but it was distant, like a body picked up used and a bit damaged in a thrift shop that couldn't quite fit anyone anymore.  He didn't realize that Lion Heart had slipped out of his numbed hands until it clanged against the stone floor and jarred the open, bloodied holes in his body.

"Squall, you fucker, stop it," Seifer barked like a total dumbass, but when Squall tried to tell him that, he choked on the blood in his throat instead.  Then the thought got washed away under the tide of another scream from Jenova; Cloud and Sephiroth were focused on her, keeping her away from where Seifer was curled like a giant dumbass gargoyle around Squall, and the others' minds were flowing so eerily well together except when they really _didn't_ and one of them would stumble under Jenova's flailing limbs.

Vincent stayed behind Cloud and Sephiroth and fired round after round, somehow managing to avoid hitting either of them every time, while Quistis and Zell slipped around her flanks.  But it was hard to keep track of the chaos through blurring vision, and Seifer's dumbass face looming over Squall and blocking the ceiling was the only thing Squall could see clearly.  Seifer's mouth was moving and saying shit like, "You can't die because I said so and I might have lied a little when I said that it didn't mean any- okay, no, asshole, you _owe_ me," which was very much a lie, thanks, Squall didn't owe him shit, and it was worth the pain to hiss, "You dumbass."

Seifer's sudden grin was a savage red slash.  One of his hands reached into his trenchcoat, the unexpectedly awkward movement making Squall groan and his vision go completely white.  He swallowed convulsively when something poured into his mouth - a potion, he was intimately familiar with the sharp menthol taste of potions - but most of it ended up spilling over his chin.

"You really gotta learn to swallow," Seifer said, but the crudity was just a reflex, and as Squall felt that whiteness start taking away all his other senses it just figured that those were going to be the last words Squall heard from him, wasn't it?

Dumbass.

...

Look, given the day he'd had, it wasn't like Irvine was expecting sunshine and rainbows.  He prided himself on being a pragmatist, after all.  But when Squall and Rinoa-Jenova had disappeared in an unnatural way that Irvine tried very hard not to remember, when he, Selphie, and Aeris had nothing else to do but follow the path through the Forest of the Ancients, he'd tentatively hoped for some kind of breather. The trees began to thin, marble flagstones breaking up the dirt path, and he imagined walking in on, say, a pile of puppies, or a well-stocked bordello, or even a poorly-stocked one, but at least anything that didn't involve Seifer cradling a half-dead Squall or piles of dead, fleshy _things_.

"Holy shit," Irvine and Selphie said simultaneously, and Selphie rushed on, "I've got Carbuncle Junctioned, even though I can't feel him, and some other shit.  You?"

"Some Quake and not much else," Irvine replied grimly.  "Aeris?"

When there wasn't a reply, Irvine forced himself to look away from the insanity, which was only a little bit literal, to Aeris, except Aeris wasn't standing where she had been just a second ago.  She wasn't standing anywhere nearby, actually.

"Where the hell did she - ?" Selphie started to demand when she abruptly squeaked and shivered at the same time that Irvine felt something pour over his head and down his neck and limbs like cool rain.  In its wake followed gentle laughter, a soft _please try not to die yet_ , and the startling weight of a few small but dense objects dropping into one of his pockets.  _Remember, time stops when you can't forgive yourself._

"Damned Centra," Irvine muttered, heartfelt.  He could feel a tingle like static electricity against his skin through his pocket, and when he reached in and pulled out several glowing little marbles, the tingling grew sharper against his fingertips.  Selphie let Irvine's coat slip off her shoulders as she pulled out a few of her own ("And to think that you teased me when I bragged about finding a dress with pockets, _ha!"_ _)_ and gripped them tight.

"I - I think Carbuncle likes them," she said, "I mean, I still can't call him out but he's definitely reacting to these things, I mean, what?"

"Guess it's time for a crash course in brand-new magic."  Irvine grabbed Selphie's free hand, spared a rueful prayer for his coat, and tugged her forward.  "You ready?"

"Guns blazing and magic drawn," she retorted, excited despite the paleness of her face and the damage to her side that was getting neither better nor worse.  He remembered Aeris saying something about time sitting around with no one to use it up and seriously considered, for one long wild moment, knocking Selphie out so that she could stay where neither the inexorability of normal time or a mad sorceress could kill her.

"What's the worse that could happen?" Irvine deadpanned as they both drew on the magic of those little marbles.  It was a bit like a draw point, except instead of keeping that magic spark tucked away it was like trying to control a determined flame that started small and began building up into a bonfire.

Irvine and Selphie held one another's gaze as they pulled on the magic, and pulled some more, and then continued pulling while the harsh retorts of a pistol (and Irvine was going to need to take a look at that if they survived this, it sounded like a beauty) and the clanging of swords made the cavern ring.  He'd never really noticed the little bits of blue tinting the green of her eyes.

"Let's go kick some ass, cowboy," she grinned.

...

Cloud fought with single-minded purpose, a faint and utterly unconscious smirk tilting his lips every so often, usually when his sword sliced so very deeply into bare purple flesh.  Intellectually, Sephiroth understood that Cloud had defeated him two or three times and thus obviously rivaled Sephiroth's abilities, but the memories of that year in which AVALANCHE grew stronger as they chased him were still dim, still incomplete.  Sometimes when he looked at Cloud he saw the quiet, almost passive sixteen-year-old who'd always looked at him with one part hero-worship, one part fear, and one part something inscrutable that Sephiroth had never been able to pick apart.  Seeing Cloud now, fighting at his side with the kind of ease that Sephiroth had only ever found with Zack, threatened to choke him with a confused tangle of emotions - exhilaration, guilt, regret, _love._   He reminded himself, _This will probably never happen again_.  He thought, _Take only what he chooses to give you of his own will this time,_ and then, _N_ _ever let that go again, you blind idiot_.

Cloud, of course, was too busy focusing on the alien trying to murder them to notice Sephiroth's emotional growing pains.  He blocked a blow that would've made Sephiroth's arm suddenly go numb when Sephiroth moved too slowly, and when Cloud shot him a look and a distinct mental sense of _what the hell is wrong with you, you freak_ , _pay attention_ , Sephiroth unexpectedly found himself laughing as he dodged another blow.  Jenova's wordless cries were partially drowned out by the thunder of Cloud's strong, relentless heartbeat.

Not quite drowned out enough, however. **_You are not allowed to deny me_**.

The edges of Sephiroth's already bruised mind started to burn, curling in defensively as green fire chewed its way in.  Somewhere far away he heard someone cry _Sephiroth_ , but he couldn't respond through teeth gritted so hard he felt a muscle in his jaw pop.  He wondered, _Is this it?_

Something freezing cold, like the creeks in the Nibel mountains fed by snowmelt, began soothing the crispy edges and putting out the fire.  The presence was not only unfamiliar but also as completely inhuman as Jenova.  He wondered when the mental airwaves had gotten so crowded.  This new presence gave off the impression of a laugh and a wordless sense of _be prepared_.

The vaulted cavern of the Temple went up like a fireworks display and Sephiroth threw an arm over his face, his vision lighting up red-white with the force of the magic getting thrown around.  Whoever was casting was overdrawing the materia to the point of complete exhaustion.

_"Suck it, Jenova!"_

There was an unholy screeching and a shudder that ran through the ground and nearly knocked Sephiroth to his knees.  Only a few seconds passed but already there was another surge of magic and Cloud yelling, "Sephiroth!"

Lights still spotted Sephiroth's vision when he shook himself and half-blindly followed Cloud's voice.  He gripped the Masamune so tightly it felt like his hand had been welded to it, his heart pounding along with his footsteps as he turned towards Jenova's angry flailing.  Beside him he felt Cloud start drawing a spell and he shifted his hold on the Masamune. and when he felt the flare of the spell snapping out of the materia like lightning he leapt up, bringing the sword down in a way that left it buried nearly to the hilt in Jenova's soft flesh.  He heard a snarled, _"_ _Omnislash!"_ and three long scars carved themselves across the temple floor and tore right into Jenova.

She screeched, physically and mentally, as black tendrils of necrosis began bleeding out from the rips and the Masamune's blade, still buried hilt-deep.  Something thick and viscous oozed out and seeped into the cracks in the marble floor at the toes of Sephiroth's and Cloud's boots.

Behind them they could hear Squall gagging on his own blood while Seifer hissed desperate threats and pleas.  Zell and Quistis were casting Restores while Vincent slipped nimbly past the gore to reach for Rinoa's body without hesitation.  For the first time in a long while Sephiroth felt like he could breathe, but with his ears and thoughts ringing in the sudden, relative quiet, it just seemed so...anticlimactic.

"Selphie!  Irvine!" Quistis cried, which made Cloud whip around at the same time Zell yelled, "Quistis, it's not working!"

"He got stabbed through the middle by tentacles, of course it isn't working!" Seifer barked.

Sephiroth just stared forward, silently watching Vincent gently draw Rinoa out of Jenova's mess and cradle her in his filthy arms.  Her head flopped back limply and the hole in her belly where the Masamune had pierced Jenova the first time was too obvious, too vivid, too familiar.  The hand that gripped the Masamune felt oddly numb.

Abruptly, the temperature of the enormous temple space dropped until Sephiroth's breath came out in small rolls of mist.  Sephiroth finally turned and saw that everyone save Seifer had backed away from Squall, from whose body a fine layer of frost was crawling, web-like, over the floor.  Seifer's leather gloves were crusted over with ice and he was hissing between his teeth from what looked like a sudden, intense cold.

"It feels like Shiva, but I didn't think Squall could Summon her since Jenova came back," Quistis blurted out.

"I can feel Carbuncle again," Selphie added, voice hoarse and body curled over something that had left the front of her dress streaked in blood.  "Maybe it's the same thing - "

"No," Seifer broke in harshly, "it was Jenova, it felt like she was smothering us, but now she's not there and I..."

A high-pitched whine clawed its way out of Squall's throat, and his teeth ground together with jarring squeals, and there was nothing anyone - not SOLDIERs, not SeeDs, not Turks - could do but watch as Squall's Knighthood tried to drag him into death with his sorceress.

...

Shiva wasn't having any of that, however.


	23. In Which Sorcery Is an Equal Opportunist

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Body horror at the beginning. Description of a panic attack and people not knowing what to do, starting with Cloud's, "Ow, shit," and ending with 'highlight of his day' if you want to skip it (see endnote for brief summary). Some discussion of the power imbalance inherent in a relationship between a minor and his older superior officer.

 

"Holy shit," panted a cadet, "the hell did we do in a part life to deserve this?"

"Fuck if I know," another gasped, leaning heavily against a tree.  "This is supposed to be a theory class, not a practical."

They obviously had no idea that Fujin could hear them from where she stood in the center of the Training Room's entrance.  The rest of the class wasn't in much better shape, and it was funny as hell to watch all the students stagger around with Raijin too busy with security elsewhere to have him as translator and buffer.  The students that could still stand, that was.

"SMITH.  LEE.  AGAIN."

The two cadets groaned but somehow managed to pull themselves mostly upright, weapons raised halfheartedly.  Abruptly it wasn't so funny anymore, watching such young kids, not much younger than Fujin but so damn innocent, flail around, dreaming of the day they would be on a battlefield with no guarantee that the enemy had never been a friend.

"STOP," she barked.  "DISMISSED."

Fujin didn't listen to their gusty sighs of relief when the students stumbled out of the Training Room, too focused on striding deeper into the hot, humid jungle for something to kill.  One hand spun her chakram restlessly. It wasn't fair that it was logical to send the more experienced SeeDs out to kill Jenova and leave behind the ones that were seasoned but not actual SeeDs.  It wasn't fair that Quistis and Zell were out there rescuing their commander when she couldn't even be there to protect _hers_.  Hell, it wasn't fair that she was too much of a professional to throw a tantrum and indulge in the whiskey she'd scoped out in Quistis' office until _Ragnarok_ _'s_ repairs were finished.

That evening, Fujin sat in the dark of Quistis' office in front of the computer's glowing screen with a bottle of whiskey and waited for the files sent over by the Estharians some days ago to load. Xu had managed to track Fujin down and start reaming her out for skipping her own classes considering how generous and understanding and altruistic Garden was for allowing a non-SeeD to teach their beloved cadets, _et cetera,_ but Fujin just stared back until Xu huffed and muttered something about taking it out of her pay.  Whatever.  Still, she swirled a finger of the whiskey in a classy crystal tumbler and wondered if it'd be worth the hassle to become an actual SeeD again if it meant being able to afford the high-shelf shit.

The high-shelf shit was what made it possible for her to get through the same information that Quistis had seen.  Fujin had never considered herself the most virtuous of people, but even she balked at the blatant torture and murder committed in the name of megalomania and science, however brilliant that science was.  She had to remind herself that she tended to expect the worst of humanity anyway to be able to read more deeply, and what she found made her stand up from a perfectly comfortable chair, pour herself a couple more fingers, and pace broodingly around the office until the tumbler was empty again.

The sudden beeping on the vid-phone was shockingly loud, startling her.  She thumbed on the vid-phone and snapped, "WHAT?"

 _"Repairs to the_ Ragnarok _are finished,"_ Xu said irritably.  _"She's prepared to leave immediately."_

Fujin looked back at the bottle of whiskey, noticeably lower than it had been a couple hours ago, and sighed.  "ACKNOWLEDGED."

...

_Squall dreamed, and it was really fucking cold.  Endless green plains were now pale snowfields, and the flowers had become tall silhouettes of trees piercing the dim glow of twilight.  His voice shook when he tentatively called out, "Shiva?"_

_Arms that were as cold and hard as stone slid around his waist from behind._   My little lion, _Shiva_ _whispered, and the stupid nickname nearly made Squall burst into tears.  Jenova had burned like a status ailment, but Shiva was cold, sharp, and clean, familiar and comforting.  When Squall found his voice, it cracked._

_"Is this real?"  
_

_Shiva's arms tightened but stopped just short of pain.  He could feel her forehead press against his spine between his shoulderblades.  She had never been so tactile before.  "Shiva, what's going on?"_

You're dying, Squall.

_The thought didn't bother him as much as it probably should have.  He looked down at himself, saw that the only real color in this world of faded greys and deep blues was his blood spilling out carelessly.  The snow drifting in the air didn't melt whenever it landed on violently jarring red._

As you are, when Jenova is destroyed, she will take you with her.  Her kind does not know how to be alone.  _Squall's breath caught when Shiva's lips pressed gently against his neck._   Remember that this is my choice to make _._

_"What - "_

I have known innumerable souls since my own kind was first awakened and I have never felt the need to remember them.  But it has become an honor to know yours, my lion.

_This time her arms didn't stop tightening.  Her forearms dug into his ribcage as she spread her hands and pushed her fingers into the holes that Jenova had ripped into his body.  Squall tried to scream, but instead of tearing out a sound it made the mild wind pick up until it blew snow into his eyes and the snow itself fell in thick flurries.  Shiva pushed and pushed until her fingers were slipping past soft tissue and curling around bones, sensations that were less pain than an empty, horrible kind of pressure.  Squall prayed and prayed that this was still Jenova, but if not, if this was really Shiva, if the last and worst betrayal of all had a feeling, then this was it._

What was mine is now yours _._

 _The probing fingers with their long, sharp nails turned into a sickening rush of half-frozen water that washed more blood out of the gaping wounds.  The weight of Shiva's arms and forehead turned heavy and wet as her body melted, soaking his clothes and his skin and his muscles and his bones, and Squall screamed and screamed_.

 "Squall!  Squall, calm down, it's Cloud, everything's fine!"

Cloud's unnatural eyes stared down at Squall, who tried to roll away until he realized that Cloud was gripping both his wrists while someone - Seifer, he saw, when he craned his neck - held Squall's head in Seifer's lap, and he tried to kick and bite to _get them off of him_.

"Ow, shit," Cloud hissed when a boot caught him in the hip, but he let go and Squall was able to twist out of Seifer's hold.  He was vaguely aware that there were other people standing around but he ignored them, staggering to his feet and stumbling for a few steps before toppling down to his hands and knees, vomiting so hard his ribs could have been fused to his spine and he wouldn't have known the difference.

There was some muttering about Jenova.  Someone called his name a few times but Squall was too busy being traumatized to notice or to care that he was spilling tears as well as sick.  His skin felt too small because something was swelling beneath it.  Everything hurt and his head was broken into pieces, some of which still tasted like Jenova's poison and others which froze to the touch and a few that sounded like the kind of crying that comes from a little kid who knows that no one is going to come.  He didn't realize he was making that sound out loud until Cloud's shadow fell over him, but if anyone tried to touch him then Squall...really didn't know what he would do except that it would be _terrible_ and he probably wouldn't ever be able to come back from that.

But Cloud didn't do anything other than get down on one knee and sit there silently.  Squall closed his eyes and pressed his forehead against the cold tiles, avoiding the sick, and couldn't seem to stop the gasping breaths or the phantoms of pain that shuddered through his body.  He couldn't even remember the last time he ate, didn't think Jenova had ever bothered to stop to think about the fact that her Knights were still human considering her first couple kids technically weren't.  The fucking wings were trying to drag him down, his skin was too small, his bones about to break through.

"Where are you, Squall?" Cloud asked quietly.

Squall huffed a breath, tried not to gag when it reflected back from the floor, and rasped, "In the Centra Ruins, you son of a bitch."

"Are you?"

 _No_ , Squall didn't say, knowing exactly what kind of psychology bullshit Cloud was trying to pull.  No, he was in a freezing field of snow and all he could see was too-bright red dripping from ice-blue hands.

"Squall, breathe," Cloud said from very far away.  "You need to calm down and breathe."

Squall lifted his head to shoot back some scathing reply, but his eyes caught on the ice starting from under his bare palms and inching out across the tiles in long tendrils.  It looked like hoarfrost, thick and feathered despite the heat from the jungle outside the temple.  His skin was tingling and he couldn't look away from the creeping frost and he _couldn't stop gasping for breath_. 

"Squall," Seifer started from somewhere Squall couldn't see him, and then someone else said, "Just _do_ it," and Squall tried to push himself at least halfway upright so he could see what was going on and whether or not 'it' constituted another violent bodily trauma.  He wasn't particularly inclined to trust _anyone_ right then, but he only managed to sit up on his heels, wings flopping, before he heard someone casting a Sleep spell.

Then all he managed to do was fade to black.  At least he didn't keel over into a puddle of bile and tears, and what did it say about the quality of his life when that was the highlight of his day?

...

Cloud leaned over Squall and rolled him carefully onto his side.  Squall breathed shallowly, but at least he breathed, and when Cloud tugged up his shirt, the wounds that should've killed him several times over by now had become newly whole skin under heavy scars that looked like they were already months old.  It was probably a good thing Cloud had never bothered trying to figure out the mechanics of magical healing.

Suddenly, Seifer seized his shirt and hauled Cloud to his feet to yell in his face, "Fix him!"

"I can't," Cloud tried to say, but Seifer snarled, "You know all about this shit, so fucking _fix it."_

"If 'this shit' were that easy to fix, it wouldn't be a problem in the first place."  Cloud grabbed Seifer's hands and none-too-gently pushed him off.  "Jenova's been riding him shotgun and who knows what's going on inside him now, or didn't you notice he was using Ice without an actual spell?  _B_ _y accident?_   So now it's your turn to calm the fuck down or you can turn around and fuck right on out of here because he doesn't have the time to deal with _your_ bullshit on top of his own.  Got it?"

Cloud mentally counted to ten to bring his voice down.  Cloud didn't think he'd ever seen Seifer, so loud and swaggering, look so lost.  It was easy to forget that these kids really were still kids, and Cloud went on more softly, "Seifer, maybe you haven't been possessed, but you've had Jenova in your head for months now.  I know you're only standing right now because you're a stubborn son of a bitch, but Jenova going down hit you too.  Squall's going to be out for a while, at least until Garden manages to get _Ragnarok_ going again, so you need to take the chance to work on yourself first if you want to be of any help to Squall."

Seifer scowled and Cloud rolled his eyes.  Kids these days.  "I know you two probably fucked at some point and you're in some serious denial, but get over it.  Your pride isn't worth it."

"Did he tell you - "

"No, but you two aren't unique and I'm not blind."  Cloud ran a hand over his face tiredly.  "Just...think.  Don't just react like a brat who never learned to use his words like a big boy.  Not with this."

He stared at Seifer, who stared off to the side mulishly until he finally reached some kind of conclusion and bent down to check on Squall himself.  Cloud let him, looking around instead to find Zell and Quistis fussing over Irvine and Selphie while Sephiroth and Vincent eyeballed Jenova's misshapen remains.  Vincent still held Rinoa's body in his arms. 

Deciding he didn't want to deal with that yet, Cloud turned to Quistis and gestured at Selphie and Irvine. "How are they?"

"They've both taken some pretty serious blows.  Irvine has a concussion and Selphie apparently decided to copy Squall and take a hole to the side."

"It's bad but not deadly, so the potions should keep her safe until the ship gets here.  And you guys said I was being paranoid when I ordered all those extras," Zell added with weak humor.

"Under the circumstances, I can appreciate your inability to listen to anyone else's advice," Quistis muttered without heat.  "How's Squall?"

"Physically, he's alive.  He's healed, but only he knows how the hell that happened."

"All right.  Once we're sure that no one's going to die, I'll try to get a hold of Xu and see how the ship's going."

"Hey, Cloud," Irvine said weakly from his sprawl on the ground, "don't suppose you know a pretty girl in a pink dress?  Green eyes and a killer smile?"

Cloud swallowed, and swallowed again.  "Aeris?  She's here?"

"Well, uh, no, not anymore.  She's still kind of...dead.  But she's a Centra, so I guess it helps that this used to be her people's temple."

In a voice that was only a little hoarse, Irvine described a strange place of glassy stone where Selphie never bled and neither of them ever got hungry or tired.  He described what Cloud recognized as the Forest of the Ancients, Squall wrapped up in Jenova-Rinoa's tentacles and the young woman who made gross faces at the scene alongside Irvine and Selphie.  "She gave us these," he said, pulling a few materia from his pocket, "let us come in with guns blazing."

So that's where the fireworks that had distracted Jenova long enough for him and Sephiroth to get to her had come from.

"She also talked about forgiving ourselves and moving on," Selphie threw in, not noticing the way Cloud's face went pale.  She batted at Quistis' hands.  "Ow, easy, I only get to be young once in my life, you can't kill me yet."

"You wouldn't know if I was trying to kill you because you'd already be dead."

"Hey!"

"As a doornail."

"That's stupid, Quistis, a doornail was never alive enough to be dead in the first place, how are you even an instructor."

Sound like we used to, don't they, said Zack.  Cloud looked at the SeeDs, at the way Zell was surprisingly gentle as he poked at Irvine, how Selphie managed a pained grin for Quistis, and had to just walk away without a word.  Vincent watched him approach; Sephiroth kept gazing in Jenova's direction.  Rinoa was still painfully limp. 

"What's been decided?" Vincent asked.

It took Cloud a moment to find his voice.  "Quistis will try to contact Xu," he replied gruffly.  "Given the amount of blood and number of contusions we have, I imagine we won't be going anywhere without _Ragnarok._ We could all use the time to recover, anyway."  Not that much sleep would be had.

"Leonhart?"

"As well as can be expected."

Vincent looked down at Rinoa thoughtfully.  "Is Jenova or Rinoa present?"

Cloud chewed the inside of his cheek for a moment.  "I don't think so, but I'm not sure.  He's showed signs of channeling Ice magic before but nothing like what he did just now."

The thick frost should have already melted, but it was still gleaming on the marble beside Squall, whose head was once more braced on Seifer's folded legs.  Seifer had somehow managed to maneuver Squall onto his back with breaking the wings.  Sephiroth shifted and opened his mouth, drawing Cloud's attention back, but he didn't say anything until Cloud prompted, "What is it?"

"You seem quite familiar with Commander Leonhart," Sephiroth said, and then he visibly winced like that hadn't been what he wanted to say at _all._

"I will take care of Rinoa," Vincent said, and promptly walked away.  Neither Cloud nor Sephiroth noticed.

"Well, you know how it is when you're off saving the world - meeting new people, some chocobo racing, a bit of time travel and questioning the purpose of one's entire existence.  I find that themes of loss and betrayal do wonders for forming interpersonal connections because both of you already know you can survive the worst if it happens again."

Getting Sephiroth to wince a second time was an admittedly hollow victory.  Cloud let out a long breath and muttered, "I'm sorry."

"No, I...you are not the one who should be saying that."  Sephiroth finally met his eyes.  "I owe you many things, Cloud.  I don't deserve your forgiveness, but with your consent I will do all I can to mitigate the damage of the pain I have caused you."

Cloud had no idea where to even begin with that and was hugely relieved when Sephiroth changed the subject.  "Do you sense Jenova?"

Cloud's vision unfocused as he poked around in his own mind.  "Not any more than before all this started."

"Same."

No reassurance there, all things considered, and Cloud thought wryly that it'd be easier to know for sure if everything inside of him weren't already a patchwork of other people and memories that may or may not be false.

"I believe I may be able to help Leonhart and Almasy," Sephiroth said carefully. 

"What?  How?" Cloud demanded.

"I've had living Jenova cells since I was _in utero_.  In the past, I've been able to share a significant portion of her power.  Since neither Leonhart nor Almasy have any physical tie to her in the way that you and I do, I may be able to remove her psychological influence."

"That doesn't sound very realistic."

Sephiroth gave him a flat look that questioned whether or not Cloud had been paying attention this whole time.  Point taken. 

"Squall shouldn't wake up until we take off the spell.  Let's take an hour or two to recover and then we might as well give it a shot."

It took a while for Cloud to realize that he'd unconsciously assumed command and not even Sephiroth had questioned it.  His sixteen-year-old self would have _died_ at the thought.

So to speak.

Far away from everyone else, Vincent had solemnly wrapped Rinoa in his cloak and was now sitting beside the terribly small bundle.  If Cloud had known that sitting down and leaning against a convenient piece of fallen column to watch over the rest of the group would result in him falling asleep out of sheer exhaustion, he probably would've raided Zell's supplies for some Hypers.

...

_Cloud dreamed, and he wasn't happy about this.  He'd seen enough of the Lifestream's monotonous landscape to last literal lifetimes._

_"Aeris!" he yelled at the empty sky.  "Aeris, if you're going to tell me there's another world-ending catastrophe and the Cetra are going to make me keep going then I'll...do something drastic."  
_

_"Aw, kiddo, is that any way to talk to my girl?"_

_"...Zack?"_

_Zack's body was leaning into Cloud's back, spine to spine and shoulders to shoulders like a mirror and a reflection.  Appropriate but still too soon, Cloud thought muzzily, and wondered how much of this was real, how much of this was a trick by the Cetra or maybe the Lifestream manifesting some wishful thinking.  Zack felt as warm and solid as Cloud vaguely remembered from being carried out of Hojo's lab, but the senses lie and he didn't know if he'd survive having his heart broken like this again if he chose to trust the lie._

_Zack, or the thing that felt like Zack, moved.  Before Cloud could stumble back, off-balance, a big hand grabbed his shoulder, turned him around, and got him engulfed by a muscular chest and two just-as-muscular arms.  "Hey, hey, don't cry, you know I have no idea what to do when people start crying."_

_"I'm not crying, you're crying," Cloud mumbled tearfully into Zack.  Then he pulled out of Zack's hold and punched him in the face._

_"Ow, shit, Cloud, what the hell," Zack cried, muffled by the hand he'd clamped over his bleeding nose._

_"You_ died.  _You've been in my head all this time and it's not like I can punch_ myself."

_"Yeah, that would be crazy.  Whoa, hey, I'm the one who died here, you can't keep punching me!"_

_"You deserve it," Cloud retorted, but his words broke halfway through and he didn't fight it when Zack pulled him back into a hug or when Zack's chin dug into the top of his head.  
_

_"Aww, kiddo," Zack said into Cloud's hair.  Cloud smooshed his face more firmly into the curve of Zack's neck, fingers curling so tightly into Zack's shirt that it would probably end up permanently stretched out.  They didn't talk until Cloud was able to take breaths that weren't shaking and mortification had started creeping red up his cheeks.  Then Zack said, "So.  Sephiroth."_

_"Hell no," Cloud groaned as he tried to wiggle away._

_Zack's arms tightened like a straitjacket.  "Dude, I have years of teasing to make up for, hold still and take it."_

"You _take it."_

_"C'mon, you've had centuries to work on your comebacks, I'm so embarrassed for you that my embarrassment is blushing."  Zack finally let him go and Cloud took a quick step backward, though he couldn't actually bring himself to move any farther away, before glancing up at Zack through the fringe of his hair.  "Oh, don't even try looking at me like that.  You promised you wouldn't use those eyes on me after the incident in the staff bathroom on the fiftieth floor."_

_"Worth a shot," Cloud muttered, and swayed easily on his feet when Zack lightly pushed him on the shoulder._

_"Cloud," Zack said seriously, "I know you.  I also know Sephiroth, and I know that this is the shittiest time to talk relationships.  But I don't think there's ever going to be a good time for you two."_

_"Exactly, so why worry about it?"_

_"Cloud."_

_Cloud spread his hands out and asked, "What's there to say, Zack?  You know what he's done.  What_ I've _done."_

_"But you still love him."_

_That it wasn't even a question was the worst part.  Cloud looked up at the sky, unable to keep looking at Zack, who went on quietly, "The Cetra have been keeping an eye on him.  They can't do anything themselves because he physically has Jenova, not just mentally, which is one of the reasons why they've kept you in reserve."  Zack shot the sky his own glare.  "But he - "_

_"I didn't remember what we had before, not until after it was all over and we didn't have to keep running.  I think I'm still missing pieces, but if what I think I remember is anything like what we had, I don't want it.  Not again."  There had been a deep chasm between them even when Sephiroth had been lying right next to him.  There had been shame, when Sephiroth walked away without a word and Cloud had been too scared to reach out himself.  There had been whispers, there were always whispers, even though they'd been very careful.  "It doesn't matter how I feel about him because I won't let him use it to make me something...less, again."_

_"I used to worry, y'know," Zack admitted.  "Neither of you really seemed...happy, I guess?  And you were, what, sixteen, and Sephiroth was, well,_ Sephiroth _, but I didn't say anything.  I'm sorry that I didn't."  
_

_"Doesn't matter.  I probably wouldn't have listened anyway."  Maybe, maybe not.  Sometimes things needed to be said out loud to be recognized, but Cloud didn't want to go down that road right now._

_"Either way, you've gotten stuck in it.  Stuck in a lot of things, actually.  Hard to move on that way."_

_Cloud finally looked back at Zack and said dryly,"Don't tell me: I need to forgive myself and move on?"_

_Zack swiped playfully at Cloud's head.  "Maybe if you'd listen you wouldn't have to keep hearing it, you little shit."_

_"Aeris thought I'd listen if I heard it from you, didn't she?"_

_"What can I say, anyone would get tired of seeing your ugly mug after several centuries of sitting around."_

_Cloud just laughed tiredly._

...

While Leonhart was still asleep, Sephiroth sat down with Seifer to see if he could break whatever made Almasy a Knight.  He figured that since Almasy's Sorceress had been taken down already and months had passed, it would be easier than trying to tackle Leonhart's case.

"The second you bad-touch my mind, Cloud isn't gonna be able to protect you."

"Don't worry.  I have higher standards than that."

"Oh, snap," Selphie snickered, then groaned when all her hurts were jolted.

Seifer's mind was tattered around the edges.  Loose threads fluttered over empty holes in some places, probably where his Sorceress had wound her magic into him and then ripped it up when she died.  Almasy may have made the original choice and loudly proclaimed that, but Sephiroth could see that the Sorceress had made sure that he'd never be able to change his mind.

Sephiroth carefully avoided those things, looking for a sense of Jenova.  Almasy's mind was bright and open like the freedom of Balamb's plains, overlaying a thick, dark space that appeared a little like chains, a little like a prison cell, if Sephiroth stayed nearby for too long.  Breaking Jenova's hold was easier than Sephiroth expected, even if it left him and Almasy both nursing pounding headaches.

"Go wake up Squall, oh Hyne, I am so kicking your ass when we get out of here," Almasy groaned.

So Sephiroth now sat cross-legged in front of Leonhart, who mirrored his position with an impressive scowl and a wing drooping to either side.  Everyone else had been threatened into standing at least several paces away, including Cloud, who'd woken from an uneasy sleep even quieter and more skittish than usual, but he could still feel the steadiness of Cloud's heartbeat if he focused and told himself, _Later.  Worry about him later_.

"I'm going to put my hands on your head," Sephiroth told Leonhart.  Leonhart didn't respond, body wound as tightly as a spring ready to pop loose, blue-tinged hands held painfully, purposefully still in his lap.  Sephiroth didn't ask where Leonhart's gloves had disappeared to, not when Leonhart had woken with a jerk and a panicked snarl and some hunkering down in his leather jacket.  Leonhart didn't say anything as Sephiroth pressed his fingers against Leonhart's temples, but his expression said it all for him.

"This will likely be unpleasant."

 _When is it not,_ said that expression.  Sephiroth took a moment to indulge in the reassuring beat of Cloud's heart before closing his eyes and feeling for Jenova's influence in a way he'd never be able to describe in words.  It wasn't as easy as finding Cloud, to whom the path was a well-worn groove in old stone, but he was Jenova's eldest and favorite and he had perfected the art of using that to his advantage, and it didn't take long to find the storm (the squall, ha) crashing around.  Leonhart's real face was as placid as it had been under a Sleep spell, almost creepy when contrasted with the screaming wind and snow and heartbreak behind it; Sephiroth knew very well how much it took to maintain that kind of control when there was anything _but_ control on the inside.

Pushing into that chaos was like plunging into freezing water.  It wasn't Jenova but it didn't feel human, either, more like a force of nature, a Nibelheim winter, with the same piercing cold Sephiroth remembered that had had nothing to do with the weather outside: uncertainty, grief, fear.  Sephiroth had to keep one metaphorical hand pressed against Cloud's pulse to stay grounded before pushing harder and deeper, only dimly aware of Leonhart's harsh gasping and what sounded like the beeping of a phone or radio from one of the SeeDs.  This was old magic, the kind that came with raw mako and forgotten northern mountain ranges, and it was nothing like the acidic green that flowed in thin rivulets over the snow as a network of veins and left dark slush in its wake.

 _Found you_.

Sephiroth tore into the green, felt it snap back and try to latch onto the green inside of him in turn.  For a moment, he was tempted: Cloud had been such an _interesting_ puppet to watch, bending and fracturing but never quite breaking, and here was a child that had already been blooded in battle and wore his pride like a challenge -

The skipping of a beat in Cloud's pulse knocked Sephiroth back, and he didn't waste any more time in digging his fingers into the green and _yanking_.

It felt like jumping off a cliff with only a rope and getting whiplash halfway down.  Sephiroth toppled back, elbows cracking hard onto the marble floor.  Leonhart's body arched and his mouth opened in a silent scream, eyes wide, as the damned wings blackened and crumbled into ash.  Almasy was immediately dashing over, grabbing Leonhart before he could fall and crack his skull open and waste all of Sephiroth's hard work, and Cloud...Cloud was there, too, a gentle hand on his shoulder helping him sit upright again.  Sephiroth had to try very hard not to read too deeply into that.

"Talk, Squall," Seifer was saying, "now's not the time to be a princess."

"Princesses can be pretty hardcore, Seifer," Selphie protested, but no one was listening, too distracted by the dramatic show.  Sephiroth watched Almasy slowly bring Leonhart back to earth without really seeing them; instead he wondered how deeply the veins of that poison ran in his own body, connecting in a fine tracery the alien cells left there in the womb so that the human ones could grow around them like a clam trying to protect itself from something unnatural.  Unwanted.  When he realized that Cloud's hand had moved from his shoulder to tugging very lightly on his hair, Sephiroth wasn't sure if he wanted to flinch away or closer.

"She's...she's not there anymore," Leonhart whispered, something in his voice suggesting that he might be talking about more than just Jenova.  He raised a hand, still tinted blue along the fingertips, and released a tiny flurry of glittering, icy dust.  Frost twisted up his wrists and nearly to his elbows like the vines draped around the temple's space, and it wasn't melting.

"Are you Junctioned again, Squall?" Quistis asked warily, and Leonhart was quiet for a few beats before replying, "No."

Everyone shared an awkward silence.

"So...are you a Sorceress now?" Zell ventured.  "Uh, Sorcerer?  Has that ever been a thing?"

"I don't know."  Leonhart had completely locked himself down again.  "Selphie, Irvine, status report."

Selphie and Irvine both jumped.  "We're alive, although we should visit Kadowaki as soon as possible," Irvine finally said.  "Also, don't change the subject.  It's not us we're worried about."

"Yeah, we've got a new worry," Quistis interrupted.  "I finally got a message from Garden.  Fujin says the _Ragnarok_ is on its way and that she has new information on Jenova."

"Does it matter now, though?" Zell asked.

But it wasn't the first time that question had been asked about Jenova or her Remnants.  Sephiroth exchanged glances with Cloud and then with Vincent, who still stood vigil a short distance away and looked just as uneasy.  Sephiroth resigned himself to a headache that would last a bit longer than he'd hoped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Squall expresses a strong emotional reaction to all the trauma that's been happening. Cloud attempts (poorly) to calm him down, but it doesn't work and the others put him under a Sleep spell.


	24. In Which Everything Finally Comes to an End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for some cheesy language, but it makes me happy.

The chocobos ridden by the others' party were looking particularly disgruntled by the time _Ragnarok_ landed outside the ruins and Fujin and Raijin disembarked.  The birds huddled near the entrance, too loyal to just leave but too unsettled by the temple's shadowed entrance to hunt down their humans and demand to know why they were being put through all this nonsense.  Raijin and a few of the Estharian engineers that had tagged along patted down the chocobos' ruffled feathers with blissful ignorance and started guiding them to the ship while Fujin approached the ruins.

The Centra Ruins that Fujin was familiar with had become a beautifully white, albeit broken-down, temple as though someone had managed to rewind time in just this one place to give a suggestion of its old glory.  The dark, forbidding entrance was a stark contrast to the bright sunlight shining off the marble exterior, and when she poked her head in, it took some time for her eye to adjust enough to see anything.

"Ready when you are, yanno," Raijin piped up from behind her.  Because Quistis had reported some casualties, Raijin held the leads of two nervously dancing chocobos in his big paw, freshly fed and rested from the stables.  Fujin was feeling an uncharacteristic sense of hesitation and almost wished she could just bail out so she wouldn't have to be the bearer of even more bad news.

"Fu?"

"GO."

She led the way into the temple, one hand wrapped tightly around her chakram, the other even more tightly around her phone.

...

"Two lefts, then a right."  Quistis was attempting to draw a map of what she remembered about the temple's plan on the floor in purple monster blood, using a severed claw salvaged from the pile of dead creatures as a stylus.  Her phone, its tracking chip turned on, lay beside her on speaker, Fujin's voice barking a word here and there.  Cloud was crouched beside her on one knee and using another claw to fill in the rest of the map.

 _"Was this always a maze?"_ Raijin groaned.

"In my time, yes," Cloud answered.  "Possibly worse, but granted, we weren't trying to lead two chocobos down narrow corridors and walkways through random battles with monsters."

"You brought medical supplies with you to get Squall and Selphie to the ship, right?" Quistis asked, not for the first time, and Fujin grumped back, _"YES."_

Selphie, Irvine, and Zell were talking with their heads close together.  Squall's head still lay in Seifer's lap, but weirdly, neither of them were speaking, not even to insult one another.  Sephiroth and Vincent remained standing guard over Jenova's remains and Rinoa's body.  Cloud noticed that the SeeDs were trying not to look directly at her, though he had no idea if it was out of guilt, grief, or some combination of the two.

"Fu!  Raijin!"  Seifer carefully moved out from under Squall to jog across the cavern and throw his arms in an unusually open display of emotion around Fujin, then Raijin.  The chocobos behind Raijin shifted and let out soft _kwehs_. 

"Thank Hyne," Quistis said fervently as she got to her feet.  "Thank you two for coming.  Is there a doctor - ?"

"RAGNAROK," Fujin bluntly interrupted.

Cloud stood up as well.  "Selphie and Irvine should be fine with some Cures.  Esuna may help Squall, even though he doesn't exactly have a normal ailment."

Squall huffed somewhere behind him.

"We're not done here."  Sephiroth's words cut through the relief as sharply as the Masamune.  He was studying Fujin's expression with all the intensity of a mako burn.  "What have you found?"

Fujin studied Sephiroth and then Cloud with the same focus and said, "SEPHIROTH AND CLOUD MUST DIE."

Awkward silences were something of a staple with this party.  Zell broke it with a faint, "Wow, tell us how you really feel."

"IDIOT," she snapped.

But Cloud was already thinking it, absorbing it, turning it over until it slotted neatly into his knowledge and pessimism.  "No, it makes sense," he said.  "As long as Sephiroth and I have her physical cells, she'll just keep coming back.  That's it, isn't it?"

Fujin didn't respond, but she didn't need to.

"No," Sephiroth said harshly, striding to stand at Cloud's side.  "Cloud and I are not sacrifices to be led to the slaughter over and over.  This should have ended centuries before now."

"But it hasn't," Vincent said softly.

"And how many more times must this battle be waged?  How many more centuries will Cloud be denied any rest, just kept in stasis at the whim of a people who have clung to a facsimile of life for so long that they have lost all semblance of humanity!"

"Sephiroth, did you really think either of us were going to survive this?" Cloud asked wearily.  He was having the most surreal moment of double-think, terrified as he was of Sephiroth's anger but relieved at how it was too heated, too _human_ , to be anything other than just the normal anger of a man worn thin.

"Zack would have fought this."

"Zack," Cloud snarled, "would've done whatever he needed to do to make sure people were safe.  The question is whether or not _you_ have the courage to do what's necessary to keep the world he died for from going to hell."

"He died for you, not the world."

Oh, that one hurt, coming as it did mere hours after touching and laughing with someone hardly more than a ghost.  "He died for what he fucking believed in!"

"Why are you so willing to be the sacrifice again?"

"Because," Cloud said, shoulders and voice dropping, "I'm tired.  I'm tired, Sephiroth.  I just want all this to end."  Couldn't even care that they were having this out in front of other people.

"Cloud..."

"We should've died a long time ago.  All the madness and the death and the - the everything, it needs to end."

Sephiroth reached out and slid his hand along Cloud's cheek, leather glove warm, fingers pushing through thick blond hair.  "How do you propose we do this?"

"If this is really the Temple, and I'd ask how that's even possible if things weren't already so impossible, then it's also the Black Materia.  We solve the puzzle, it'll take us and everything left of Jenova over there with it."

"That leaves the Black Materia."

"With the Sorceresses gone, SeeD will need something new to keep them busy anyway."  Cloud stood toe-to-toe with Sephiroth - literally _and_ metaphorically, apparently - and put a hand on his chest.  "Look.  What we had before?  Never again."

On anyone else's face, it would have looked like mild disappointment.  On Sephiroth's, it was devastation, carefully reigned in by regret and understanding.  "Yes, of course.  I would never - no, not again."

"We go as equals or I kill you permanently this time.  Got it?"

Sephiroth frowned.  "Wait, what do you - "

His uncharacteristically awkward sound of surprise was muffled by Cloud's hard kiss.  Strangely, Cloud could've sworn he felt the earth literally tremble.

"Ah," said Vincent.

"Oh my,"said Quistis.

"Hell yeah," said Selphie.

"Oh shit," cried Zell, "the ground is moving!"

A fine tremor ran through the marble beneath their feet, just enough to make the chocobos _wark_ with surprise.  Cloud and Sephiroth jerked apart, staring at one another and breathing heavily.

"I don't think I can do this again," Irvine moaned.  "My body can only take so much trauma."

"Get Squall and Selphie some Cures and onto the chocobos!" Seifer yelled.  He ran back towards Squall, who was already struggling to his feet, and slipped an arm around his slim waist.  Fujin and Raijin forced the chocobos to stay in one place as Quistis ran to help Irvine and Zell simply lifted Selphie straight up in his arms.  Only Vincent didn't stumble as another tremor rumbled through.

Cloud glanced at the small, thin body draped in Vincent's arms and said carefully, "Vincent," and Vincent, who had never known Rinoa, just said, "She deserved better."  He studied Sephiroth for a moment, then said, "I'm honored to have met you as you truly are."

Sephiroth dipped his head.  "And I, you."

Vincent seemed to struggle for words, which were nearly drowned out anyway by the SeeDs calling out to one another and scrambling to leave.  "Cloud, I have always been honored to fight beside you and count you as a friend."

Cloud quirked a smile.  "And I, you."

"Guys, c'mon, I think I see all the dead stuff moving!  Oh, Hyne, it's like moldy gelatin.  Can gelatin even get moldy?"

"Shut up and move it!"

Cloud didn't realize he still had a hand on Sephiroth's chest until Sephiroth's hand covered it, pressing down just that little bit harder and closer.  Seifer held Squall, who was obviously disgruntled about it, upright on one chocobo while Irvine was able to steady himself and Selphie on the other.  Fujin and Raijin each held a lead, Quistis and Zell had taken point, and Vincent brought up the rear.  All of them were staring at Cloud and Sephiroth.

"Just _go_ , _"_ Cloud said.

Surprisingly, it was Squall who spoke up.  "War, death, or silence?"

Cloud was about to ask what the hell Squall was talking about when he suddenly remembered a conversation, one of their first, when Cloud's head was still ruled by ghosts.  He laughed a little.  "After all this, maybe silence wouldn't be so bad."

The ground shook harder, sending the chocobos into an unhappy, squawking dance.

"Guys, I really think the dead stuff is moving!"

Practicality cut short what could've been a long scene of goodbyes and last words.  Cloud exchanged one last, long look with Vincent, and then the others were gone back down the corridor from which they originally came, leaving Cloud and Sephiroth alone with Jenova's remains.

"Cloud," Sephiroth started.  Cloud promptly drew his hand out from under Sephiroth's, grabbed a section of silver hair, and pulled Sephiroth down those few inches to steal another kiss that began with teeth and ended with the soft slide of skin against wet skin. 

"Save it for after we finish this."

Sephiroth wanted to argue, Cloud could tell, but instead he smiled.  It wasn't much compared to most smiles, but it was the widest and most honest one Cloud could ever remember seeing on him.  "Yes, dear."

Despite the tremors that were graduating into quakes, despite the madness behind them and pain between them, Cloud's laughter echoed dimly off the cavern walls as he and Sephiroth dashed for the corridor that would take them into the heart of the temple.

The winters in Nibelheim had always been particularly cold, but the summers could take one's breath away.

...

The rest of the party had made it out of the temple and to the base of the airship when the ground shook hardest of all, making the ship's landing gear creak and knocking the people who weren't on chocobos off their feet.

"The _hell_ \- "

Blinding light scorched the air and bleached the backs of their eyelids white.  Seifer instinctively curled himself around Squall, thighs clamped tightly to the chocobo's sides, ignoring the ice that immediately started a freezing, automatically defensive cold spreading from the places where his body touched Squall's.  The grinding and tumbling of a hundred thousand enormous marble blocks scraped the air raw.  He thought he could hear screaming coming from the airship.

As suddenly as it began, it ended.

Seifer had to consciously make his body uncurl.  Compared to the deafening screeching, the silence dug into his eardrums and made his head ache.  He opened his eyes, and with the light gone, the world was far too shaded for a sunny afternoon.  Squall's brown hair was as dark as wet stone.  When Squall tilted his head, his eyes were the blue of a a northern glacier.

"It's gone," Selphie breathed incredulously.

Seifer twisted around and, where the Temple of the Ancients had stood, there was nothing but a giant hole in the ground and a few scattered, broken columns along its rim.  Vincent, probably the least injured and exhausted of them all, kneeled to lay Rinoa on the grass so gently that it hurt to see before standing and heading for what was now empty space.

"Let's...let's get on the ship," Quistis said shakily as the crew came rushing out with stretchers and potions.  Seifer tightened his grip around Squall again, and he must have been in more shock than he thought because he could swear he felt Squall press back into his chest and lock his hands around Seifer's forearms.

"Is that it?" Zell wondered, as dazed as Seifer felt.

Things got blurry after that.  The SeeDs were hustled off chocobos and onto stretchers or into crinkly emergency blankets with so much efficiency that Seifer didn't have to think even if he'd been able to.  He couldn't take his eyes off Squall even though months of nightmares and questioning his sanity, numerous monster-inflicted cuts and contusions, were catching up to him now that the threat was gone.  At one point Vincent returned holding a sphere like a large marble made of obsidian, which caught the light and cast strange shadows.

It was over.

The Sorceresses were gone.

Through exhaustion-blurred eyes, he watched the medical personnel exclaim over the pale blue of Squall's fingers and the lines of frost seared up his arms.  Outside, it started to rain.

...

For a long time afterwards, Squall didn't speak.

They buried Rinoa with full honors, all of Balamb and most of the other two Gardens observing in addition to seemingly half the population of Galbadia.  Most of their party was still wearing bandages from that last battle.  By the evening of that day, the statue of a woman with the wings of an angel spread to their greatest width stood overlooking the rest of Galbadia's largest cemetery, and no matter what season it was, its plinth was always covered with fresh flowers.

Vincent remained for a long while, to the surprise of all.  He split his time between quiet conversation with Quistis over tea and the silence of Squall's company.  _I know what it means to share an existence with another being_ , was all Vincent said when Seifer asked, but Seifer did once overhear Vincent murmur to an unresponsive Squall, _She made her choice.  It's now your choice whether or not you will honor her sacrifice_.

Quistis took over the commander's duties, but she was smart enough to delegate and avoid becoming the numb shadow that Squall had nearly been after the Time Compression.  She offered to induct Seifer, Fujin, and Raijin as proper SeeDs, but all three refused.  Instead they were listed as 'independent consultants,' which to Seifer just meant that they were able to terrorize the cadets as instructors and get paid for it.  Selphie thought it was hilarious, Zell always picked a fight over it, and Irvine pretended to be above all the idiocy while secretly putting bets in the pool on how long it would take Seifer or Fujin to drive another cadet to tears.

Fujin was one of those who were delegated some of the commander's tasks.  She did them so well that every so often Quistis would unsubtly bring up the question of promotion.  At night, alone in her quarters, Fujin would curl up on her couch and stare blankly at the faint lights she could see outside the living room window, reminding herself that being the bearer of bad news didn't mean that the consequences were actually her fault.

Selphie threw the biggest Hyne-damned festival that Garden had ever seen.  It helped that she could guilt or blackmail most of the staff into helping.

No one knew what to do with Squall, who finished the process of becoming that numb shadow.  He ate little but slept more than he ever had.  He usually hid himself away in the uppermost arches of Garden made of thin, curved glass where the wind blew cold and everything was just a distant point hundreds of feet below.  Sometimes he would take one of the bikes and disappear for days at a time.  Those were the times when Seifer found his already limited patience dropped to near zero and Quistis would have to suspend him from teaching until Squall returned.  _You need to take a step back_ , Kadowaki told him, _You're getting obsessed._ _You can't make Squall the foundation of your emotional healing._

But Seifer had thrown away his chances before.  He wasn't going to make that mistake again.

After two months had passed, Seifer woke up in the middle of the night to the hiss of the door to his quarters opening and closing, almost inaudible over the sound of the rain hitting the bedroom window.  The pistol he always kept within reach on his nightstand was in his hand before he realized that the silhouette pulling back his covers and sliding into bed beside him was Squall, and he set it back down with a sigh.  He managed not to say anything when Squall lay down beside him, not touching but close enough that Seifer could feel the sort of coolness that usually came from someone who'd been standing outside for a while, even though Seifer knew that wasn't the reason at all.  When Seifer didn't push him away, the tension that was making Squall's body stiff slowly relaxed.

The first words that Seifer heard from him in weeks were, "I never wanted this."

Seifer turned over so he was facing Squall.  There was nothing smartass to say to that.  All he could say was, "Stay."

Squall's eyes shone faintly in the darkness like a cat's.  Like a Guardian Force's.  Like a SOLDIER's.

He stayed.

 


	25. In Which Everything Isn't as Ended as Previously Implied

Young, eager faces stared up at the podium with varying degrees of awe and hero-worship, practically radiating all the innocence and immaturity of their age.  It made Squall’s skin crawl.

“Hey, Princess, check it out,” Seifer whispered with an elbow to Squall's ribs.  Squall shot him a warning look that Seifer blithely ignored.  “Third row, seventh from the left.  See anyone familiar?”

With Quistis giving the usual start-of-the-year speech at the podium dominating the front of the stage, partially hiding the Garden faculty sitting in a line along the back, Squall risked leaning to the side.  The kid that Seifer had singled out was smaller than the other recruits with a pointy chin and hair that made Squall wonder if one of the chocobos had escaped the stables again.  To his left was a boy with hair colored the kind of pale that Squall hadn't seen in nearly twenty years.

"Shit," he exhaled.

As he watched, a third kid, the lanky boy on the other side of the first one, grinned at something Quistis said and nudged the first kid, nearly knocking him right over.  One more chair down the line was a girl of the same age, idly playing with her braid and smiling at the furious whispers going on beside her.  Suddenly she was looking straight up at Squall and pinning him in place with vividly green eyes that reminded him of yellow flowers and endless white horizons.  The magic under his skin shivered.

“What do you think, Squall?” Seifer asked quietly, half amused, half serious.

“...I think this year will be interesting.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, this turned into reincarnation fic, ahaha. Does that mean a 'verse? ...Yeah, probably, fuckin shoot me.

**Author's Note:**

> _Imperfect Tense_ was started about ten years ago back in high school around the same time as _[Eir's Tomorrow](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1315642)_. This one was magnitudes easier to rewrite and finish, however, because it's comparatively much less serious and is basically a loose parody of itself. All my love to arinrowan, who bribed me with [pretty things](https://www.etsy.com/shop/arinsdesigns), and to fateofshadow/celtichobbit, who is one of the loveliest people I know.
> 
> Jsyk, I originally wrote this just because I wanted Sorcerer!Squall. That's it, that's the story.
> 
> My [tumblr](http://jukeboxhound.tumblr.com/), if you're interested in incoherent screaming over FF.


End file.
